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I 



METHODS AND AIMS 

IN THE STUDY OF 

LITERATURE 

A SERIES OF EXTRACTS AND 
ILLUSTRATIONS 



ARRANGED AND ADAPTED 
BY 

LANE COOPER 

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 
IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY LANE COOPER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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PREFACE 

For this volume I have adopted the title of a privately 
issued pamphlet, Methods and Aims in the Study of Lit- 
erature, which I have found useful to various classes in 
English, but in particular to one in the theory of poetry. 
The pamphlet consisted of a few selections, beginning 
with what is now fourth in the second section, and pri- 
marily drawn from Coleridge and Wordsworth, with addi- 
tional illustrations from Milton, Dante, and Plato ; virtually 
all these extracts are here included in the second, third, 
and sixth sections. The smaller collection was designed 
to free the student of poetry, at the outset, from common 
errors as to the nature of genius — errors that interfere 
with his understanding of the poets themselves, and with 
his appreciation of whatever formal treatise (the Poetics of 
Aristotle, say, or the Ars Poetic a of Horace) he happens 
first to take up. I hope that the larger collection will ren- 
der a more positive service, if only by way of suggesting 
that the Platonic conception of the artistic regulation of 
impulse still retains its validity. 

With systematic works on method my volume obvi- 
ously enters into no competition. 

If evidence in the poets themselves respecting their 
habits of study and production ought in some measure to 
guide us in studying and reproducing their thoughts and 
emotions, it must be said that such evidence, though there 



iv METHODS AND AIMS 

is really no lack of it, is neither easy to find nor easily 
arranged. I have included several extracts from a mere 
wish to have them together for ease of reference and 
comparison. Yet the thought that gives unity to the 
whole is not, I hope, too much overlaid, being more than 
once clearly expressed by authors who are quoted — for 
example, by Browning (p. 187), where he speaks of the 
marriage of law and impulse in the work of the great 
Creative Artist. And the gradual progress of the selec- 
tions, from those that insist upon the necessity of law and 
order in poetic art to those that insist upon the necessity 
of emotion, must be evident ; though I am aware that the 
extract from Reynolds (pp. 16-17), an d those from Boeckh 
(pp. 45-46, 49-52), being essentially- Platonic, would not 
lose if they were brought closer to one from the Sympo- 
sium (pp. 220-222). At all events, I trust the reader will 
find correspondences between one part and another, and, 
in spite of occasional interruption and discrepancy, a gen- 
eral corroboration of opinion and experience throughout. 
The main course of the selections is as follows : 
First, under a single heading, come those on method 
in general ; those on the relation of scientific to artistic 
method ; those on method in arts other than literature ; 
one on the method of observation and comparison in nat- 
ural science, where the procedure is fundamentally the 
same as that employed in the study of literature ; and 
one on the life of a scholar who fully understood this 
basic truth. Then, under a second heading, come those 
on observation and comparison in literature, and, under a 
third, supplementary to these, the extracts from Words- 
worth's letters. The fourth section, illustrating the practice 



PREFACE v 

of poets and others in composing, naturally follows these 
letters, and leads up to the fifth, on the studies of poets. 
As a final illustration of the bond between rigorous method 
and the artistic utterance of passion, I could hardly avoid 
choosing for the sixth section the treatment of the su- 
preme passion of love by (in the main) supreme poets. 
And I have ventured in all humility to close with a pas- 
sage from Scripture that seems to gain added signifi- 
cance in the new setting, while it puts the final emphasis 
where the final emphasis in the study of literature and 
of life belongs. 

It only remains for me to record my thanks and 
acknowledgments to several authors and publishers who 
have kindly allowed me to make use of various selec- 
tions : to Houghton Mifflin Company for the extracts 
from Palmer's Herbert and Allen's review of it, and 
for those from Shaler's Autobiography and Norton's 
translation of the Vita Nuova ; 1 to Mr. Kenyon Cox and 
Charles Scribner's Sons for several paragraphs from The 
Classic Point of View ; to Longmans, Green, & Co. for 
an extract from Professor Albert S. Cook's edition of 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation ; to the editors of Modern 
Language Notes for permission to reprint my article en- 
titled A Glance at Wordsworth's Reading, and to them 
and to Professor Laura E. Lockwood for her article on 
Milton s Corrections ; to Harper and Brothers and William 
Blackwood and Sons for Minto's essay, The Historical 



1 The selections from The Autobiography of Nathaniel S. Shaler and 
C. E. Norton's The New Life of Dante are used by permission of, and 
by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized 
publishers of their works. 



vi METHODS AND AIMS 

Relationships of Burns ; to Dr. Ida Langdon for the pas- 
sage from Materials for the Study of Spenser s Theory of 
Fine Aft; and to Professor Justin H. Smith for extracts 
from The Troubadours at Home. The selections from 
Jowett's translation of Plato are reprinted with the con- 
sent of the holders of the copyright. Two definitions of 
'art ' on page 2 are borrowed from The Artistic Ordering 
of Life by Professor Cook ; I am also indebted to him for 
the passage from Shedd on The Meaning of Method- 
ology, and for the extract entitled Byron's Early Reading. 
Aside from these instances, I hope I have in the foot- 
notes given proper credit in all cases where credit is due. 
A few trifling errors, infelicities in punctuation, and the 
like, I have silently corrected or emended ; but it has 
seemed undesirable, if not impossible, to normalize all the 
selections in all respects. 

LANE COOPER 

Cornell University 
Ithaca. New York 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. On Method in General i 

I. Milton on Discipline I 

II. Art equals Method 2 

III. John Burnet on Aristotle and Method .... 2 

IV. Shedd on Methodology 4 

V. Herbert Spencer on the Relation of Art to Science 8 

VI. Leonardo da Vinci on Method in the Art of Painting 14 

VII. Sir Joshua Reynolds on Method 16 

VIII. Kenyon Cox on Design in Painting 18 

IX. Sir Frederick Pollock on Personality and Method . 26 

X. Shaler on the Method of Agassiz 27 

XL The Method of John Sherren Brewer 34 

II. On Method in the Study of Literature ... 44 

I. Leigh Hunt on Reconstructing the Spirit of the Past 44 
II. August Boeckh on Interpretation and Criticism as 
the Two Distinct Functions in the Study of the 
Past 45 

III. Professor Cook's Adaptation of Boeckh to the Study 

of a Particular Masterpiece 46 

IV. Boeckh on the Relation of Encyclopaedia to Method- 

ology 49 

V. Methods and Aims in the Study of Literature : 

Opinions from Two Poets 52 

III. Extracts from Letters of Wordsworth on the 
Study and Practice of Poetry . . . 

I. Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies 

II. Wordsworth to William Rowan Hamilton 

III. Wordsworth to William Rowan Hamilton 

IV. Wordsworth to Lord Lonsdale .... 
V. Wordsworth to William Rowan Hamilton 



viii METHODS AND AIMS 

PAGE 

IV. Illustrations of the Practice of Great Writers 

in Composing 63 

I. Professor Lockwood on Milton's Corrections of 

the Minor Poems 63 

II. Horace 76 

III. Ben Jonson on Shakespeare 76 

IV. Ben Jonson on Style 77 

V. Samuel Johnson 79 

VI. Rousseau 80 

VII. Gilman on Coleridge 81 

VIII. Coleridge 81 

IX. Wordsworth, as seen by his Sister 82 

X. De Quincey 83 

XI. Cardinal Newman 84 

XII. Charles Lamb _ 85 

XIII. Manzoni 85 

XIV. Tennyson 86 

XV. Stevenson 87 

XVI. Lafcadio Hearn 90 

XVII. Jowett 92 

XVIII. Balzac . . 92 

V. On the Studies of Poets 96 

I. A Glance at Wordsworth's Reading 96 

II. Minto on Robert Burns 132 

III. Byron's Early Reading 155 

IV. Spenser's Use of Books 158 

V. Shakespeare's Books 164 

VI. An Illustration of Shakespeare's Use of Books . 170 

VII. Milton's Plans and Studies for Paradise Lost . . 171 

VIII. Milton's Account of his Own Education . . . . 179 

VI. Method in the Poetry of Love — with Illus- 
trations 187 

I. Browning 187 

II. The Method of the Troubadours 187 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

III. A Method of Study suggested by the Practice of 

Dante 195 

IV. On the Structure of the Vita Nuova ....198 
V. Some of the Topics discussed by Dante in his 

Treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia 203 

VI. The Method of Petrarch 204 

VII. The Method of George Herbert 208 

VIII. George Herbert : Love Unk?iown 213 

IX. Socrates on the Principles of Composition . . . 216 
X. The Method of Agathon in the Symposhwi of 

Plato 219 

XI. Diotima explains the Method of Artistic Educa- 
tion to Socrates 220 

XII. Wordsworth on Love and Reason 223 

XIII. The Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians . . 223 

INDEX OF EXTRACTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS ... 225 

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 229 



METHODS AND AIMS IN THE 
STUDY OF LITERATURE 

I 

ON METHOD IN GENERAL 

I. MILTON ON DISCIPLINE 

There is not that thing in the world of more grave and 
urgent importance, throughout the whole life of man, than 
is discipline. What need I instance ? He that hath read 
with judgment of nations and commonwealths, of cities 
and camps, of peace and war, sea and land, will readily 
agree that the flourishing and decaying of all civil socie- 
ties, all the moments and turnings of human occasions, 
are moved to and fro as upon the axle of discipline. So 
that whatsoever power or sway in mortal things weaker 
men have attributed to fortune, I durst with more con- 
fidence (the honor of Divine Providence ever saved) 
ascribe either to the vigor or the slackness of discipline. 
Nor is there any sociable perfection in this life, civil or 
sacred, that can be above discipline ; but she is that which 
with her musical cords preserves and holds all the parts 
thereof together. . . . And certainly discipline is not only 
the removal of disorder, but, if any visible shape can be 
given to divine things, the very visible shape and image of 



2 METHODS AND AIMS 

virtue ; whereby she is not only seen in the regular ges- 
tures and motions of her heavenly paces as she walks, but 
also makes the harmony of her voice audible to mortal 
ears. 1 

II. ART EQUALS METHOD 

According to the Standard Dictionary (New York, 
1902), Art may be defined as 'the skilful and system- 
atic arrangement or adaptation of means for the attain- 
ment of some desired end.' With this compare Aristotle 
(384-322 b.c): 

* Since there is no art which is not a habit of method- 
ical production, nor any habit of methodical production 
which is not an art, it follows that the definition of Art 
is : " A habit of production in conscious accordance with 
a correct method." ' 2 

It is to be noted that morality may be similarly de- 
fined, thus : A habit of action in conscious accordance 
with a correct method. 

III. JOHN BURNET ON ARISTOTLE AND METHOD 

The question of method is always vital to Aristotle, 
and he seems to have found his hearers very deficient 
in a due sense of its importance. He complains in one 
place that people dislike any method of exposition they 
are not accustomed to, and mean by intelligible no more 
than familiar. It is just the same as with the ancient 
laws, which are often childish, but have been sanctified 

1 Milton, The Reason of Church Government I. 1 {Prose Works, Bonn 
Edition, 2. 441-442). 2 Eth. Nic. 6. 4. 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 3 

by long custom. Thus it is that some will not listen to 
a lecture unless it is put into mathematical form, while 
others demand examples and illustrations, and others 
again require the evidence of some poet. One class want 
everything put with minute exactitude ; others are an- 
noyed by precision, either because they are incapable of 
connected thought, or because they think it is mean and 
petty. There is something about it, in philosophy as well 
as in business, that repels them. What is wanted to 
remedy all this is Culture. We cannot be always looking 
for the method of knowledge and for knowledge itself 
at the same time. Neither is easy to find. It is clearly 
necessary, then, that we should have some preliminary 
training in these matters, so that we may know where 
we are entitled to demand mathematical precision, and 
where anything of the sort would be entirely out of place. 

... In the Protagoras of Plato the young Hippocrates 
actually blushes at the suggestion that he is going to take 
lessons with any other view than to get that unprofes- 
sional culture which alone becomes a gentleman. It is 
clear, however, that Aristotle means something far more 
definite than this. With him the man of culture is above 
all things the arbiter of method. He is the judge of how 
much precision is fairly to be expected in any inquiry . . . 
and in the Metaphysics we are told that it shows want of 
culture not to know what can be demonstrated and what 
can not. 

The clearest account of the matter, however, is to be 
found in a remarkable passage at the beginning of the 
treatise on the Parts of Animals. There we read that 
there are two ways of possessing any science, whether it be 



4 METHODS AND AIMS 

humble or exalted, one of which may be called knowledge 
of the subject and the other a sort of culture. It shows 
culture to be able to form a right judgment instinctively as 
to where the speaker's exposition of a subject is method- 
ically correct and where it is amiss. This is general cul- 
ture, the power of judging all scientific method correctly. 1 

IV. SHEDD ON METHODOLOGY 

Methodology, or the science of method, is never more 
important, and never yields greater fruit, than when 
applied to historical studies. At the same time, it pos- 
sesses an independent value, apart from its uses when 
applied to any particular subject. Treating, as it does, of 
the scientific mode of approaching and opening any depart- 
ment of knowledge, it is a species of philosophia prima, 
or philosophy of philosophy, such as Plato and Aristotle 
were in search of. This, in their view, was the very 
highest kind of science, for the reason that it is not con- 
fined to some one portion of truth, as a specific science is, 
but is an instrument by which truth universally may be 
reached. It was what they denominated an organon — an 
implement whereby the truth of any subject might be dis- 
covered. It thus resembled the science of logic. Logic 
does not, like philosophy or theology, enunciate any par- 
ticular truths, but reaches those principles of universal 
reasoning by which particular truths, in these depart- 
ments or any other, may be discovered and defended. If 
now we conceive of a science of investigation that should 

1 The Ethics of Aristotle (ed. John Burnet), Introduction, pp. xxxi- 
xxxii. 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 5 

stand in the same relation to all particular investigations 
that logic does to reasoning generally, we shall have the 
conception of the science of methodology ; and it is one 
form of that primary philosophy which Plato and Aristotle 
were seeking for. 

In the judgment of these thinkers the philosophia prima 
was the most difficult problem that could be presented to 
the human mind, because it was the problem for solving 
all problems. It was like those general formulas which 
the mathematician seeks, by means of which he may 
resolve a great number of particular questions. They did 
not claim to have constructed such a prima philosophia, 
yet they none the less regarded it as the goal which 
should be continually kept in view by the philosopher. 
And they would measure the progress of philosophic 
thought, from age to age, by the approximation that 
was made towards it. Even if the goal should never 
be reached, still the department of philosophy would be 
a gainer by such a high aim. Lord Bacon himself regrets 
that the eye had been taken off from it, and that thinkers 
had confined themselves to mere parts of truth. Another 
error ' — he remarks, in enumerating the ' peccant humors ' 
of learning — ' is, that after the distribution of particular 
arts and sciences, men have abandoned universality, or 
philosophia prima ; which cannot but cease and stop all 
progression. For no perfect discovery can be made upon 
a flat or level, neither is it possible to discover the more 
remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but 
upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to 
a higher science.' 1 

1 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I. 



6 METHODS AND AIMS 

The science of method seeks from this higher level 
to survey all the sciences, and from an elevated point of 
view to discover in each given instance the true mode of 
investigation. It is the science of the sciences, because it 
furnishes the philosophic clue to all of them, and stands 
in the same relation to the whole encyclopaedia of human 
inquiry that a master-key does to all the locks which it 
opens. Its uses are evident ; for if the method, or plan 
of investigation, is the avenue by which the human mind 
makes its entrance into a subject, then upon its intrinsic 
adaptation to the case in hand depends the whole success 
of the inquiry. If the method be a truly philosophic one, 
the examination of the topic proceeds with ease, accuracy, 
and thoroughness. But if it be arbitrary and capricious, 
the inquirer commences with an error, which, like a mis- 
take in the beginning of an arithmetical calculation, only 
repeats and multiplies itself every step of the way. 

Methodology seeks in each instance to discover the 
method of nature, as that specific mode of investigation 
which is best fitted to elucidate a subject. By the method* 
of nature is meant that plan which corresponds with the 
internal structure. Each department of human inquiry 
contains an interior order and arrangement which the 
investigator must detect, and along which he must move, 
in order to a thorough and symmetrical apprehension 
of it. The world of mind is as regular and architectural 
as the world of matter ; and hence all branches of intel- 
lectual and moral science require for their successful 
prosecution the same natural and structural modes of 
investigation which a Cuvier applies to the animal king- 
dom, and a De Candolle to the vegetable. The method 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 7 

of the anatomist is a beautiful example of the method of 
nature. As in anatomy the dissection follows the veins, 
or muscles, or nerves, or limbs, in their branchings off, so 
the natural method everywhere never cuts across, but 
along, the inward structure, following it out into its 
organic divisions. The science of method aids in dis- 
covering such a mode of investigation, and tends to pro- 
duce in the investigator that fine mental tact by which he 
instinctively approaches a subject from the right point, 
and, like the slate quarry man, lays it open along the line 
of its structure and its fracture. The power of method is 
closely allied to the power of genius. A mind inspired by 
it attacks a subject with great impetuosity, and yet does 
not mar or mutilate it, while it penetrates into all its 
parts. ' I have seen Michael Angelo ' — says a contempo- 
rary of that great artist — 'at work after he had passed his 
sixtieth year, and, although he was not very robust, he cut 
away as many scales from a block of very hard marble in a 
quarter of an hour as three young sculptors would have ef- 
fected in three or four hours — a thing almost incredible 
to one who had not actually witnessed it. Such was the 
impetuosity and fire with which he pursued his labor that I 
almost thought the whole work must have gone to pieces ; 
with a single stroke he brought down fragments three or 
four fingers thick, and so close upon his mark that had 
he passed it, even in the slightest degree, there would 
have been a danger of ruining the whole, since any such 
injury, unlike the case of works in plaster or stucco, would 
have been irreparable.' 1 Such is the bold yet safe power 
of a mind that works by an idea, and methodically. 2 

1 Harford, Life of Angelo. 2 Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine 1. 1-6. 



8 METHODS AND AIMS 

V. HERBERT SPENCER ON THE RELATION OF 
ART TO SCIENCE 

Unexpected though the assertion may be, it is never- 
theless true that the highest Art of every kind is based on 
Science — that without Science there can be neither per- 
fect production nor full appreciation. Science, in that 
limited acceptation current in society, may not have been 
possessed by various artists of high repute ; but, acute 
observers as such artists have been, they have always 
possessed a stock of those empirical generalizations which 
constitute science in its lowest phase ; and they have 
habitually fallen far below perfection, partly because their 
generalizations were comparatively few and inaccurate. 
That science necessarily underlies the fine arts becomes 
manifest, a priori, when we remember that art-products 
are all more or less representative of objective or subjec- 
tive phenomena ; that they can be good only as they 
conform to the laws of these phenomena ; and that, before 
they can thus conform, the artist must know what these 
laws are. That this a priori conclusion tallies with experi- 
ence we shall soon see. 

Youths preparing for the practice of sculpture have to 
acquaint themselves with the bones and muscles of the 
human frame in their distribution, attachments, and move- 
ments. This is a portion of science ; and it has been 
found needful to impart it for the prevention of those 
many errors which sculptors who do not possess it com- 
mit. A knowledge of mechanical principles is also requi- 
site ; and such knowledge not being usually possessed, 
grave mechanical mistakes are frequently made. Take an 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 9 

instance. For the stability of a figure it is needful that 
the perpendicular from the centre of gravity — ' the line 
of direction,' as it is called — should fall within the base 
of support ; and hence it happens that when a man 
assumes the attitude known as 'standing at ease,' in 
which one leg is straightened and the other relaxed, the 
line of direction falls within the foot of the straightened 
leg. But sculptors unfamiliar with the theory of equi- 
librium not uncommonly so represent this attitude that 
the line of direction falls midway between the feet. 
Ignorance of the law of momentum leads to analogous 
blunders ; as witness the admired Discobolus, which, as 
it is posed, must inevitably fall forward the moment the 
quoit is delivered. 

In painting, the necessity for scientific information, 
empirical if not rational, is still more conspicuous. What 
gives the grotesqueness of Chinese pictures, unless their 
utter disregard of the laws of appearances — their absurd 
linear perspective, and their want of aerial perspective ? 
In what are the drawings of a child so faulty, if not in a 
similar absence of truth — an absence arising, in great 
part, from ignorance of the way in which the aspects of 
things vary with the conditions ? Do but remember the 
books and lectures by which students are instructed ; or 
consider the criticisms of Ruskin ; or look at the doings 
of the pre-Raphaelites ; and you will see that progress in 
painting implies increasing knowledge of how effects in 
nature are produced. The most diligent observation, if 
unaided by science, fails to preserve from error. Every 
painter will indorse the assertion that unless it is known 
what appearances must exist under given circumstances, 



io METHODS AND AIMS 

they often will not be perceived ; and to know what 
appearances must exist is, in so far, to understand the 
science of appearances. . . . 

To say that music, too, has need of scientific aid will 
cause still more surprise. Yet it may be shown that music 
is but an idealization of the natural language of emotion ; 
and that, consequently, music must be good or bad accord- 
ing as it conforms to the laws of this natural language. 
. . . But perhaps it will suffice to instance the swarms of 
worthless ballads that infest drawing-rooms as composi- 
tions which science would forbid. They sin against science 
by setting to music ideas that are not emotional enough 
to prompt musical expression ; and they also sin against 
science by using musical phrases that have no natural 
relations to the ideas expressed — even where these are 
emotional. They are bad because they are untrue. And 
to say they are untrue is to say they are unscientific. 

Even in poetry the same thing holds. . . . The entire 
contravention of these principles results in bombast or 
doggerel. . . . 

Every artist, in the course of his education and after- 
life, accumulates a stock of maxims by which his practice 
is regulated. Trace such maxims to their roots, and they 
inevitably lead you down to psychological principles. 
And only when the artist understands these psychological 
principles and their various corollaries can he work in 
harmony with them. 

We do not for a moment believe that science will make 
an artist. While we contend that the leading laws both of 
objective and subjective phenomena must be understood 
by him, we by no means contend that knowledge of such 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL II 

laws will serve in place of natural perception. Not the 
poet only, but the artist of every type, is born, not made. 
What we assert is that innate faculty cannot dispense with 
the aid of organized knowledge. Intuition will do much, 
but it will not do all. Only when Genius is married to 
Science can the highest results be produced. 

As we have above asserted, science is necessary not 
only for the most successful production, but also for the 
full appreciation, of the fine arts. In what consists the 
greater ability of a man than of a child to perceive 
the beauties of a picture, unless it is in his more ex- 
tended knowledge of those truths in nature or life which 
the picture renders ? How happens the cultivated gentle- 
man to enjoy a fine poem so much more than a boor 
does, if it is not because his wider acquaintance with 
objects and actions enables him to see in the poem much 
that the boor cannot see ? And if, as is here so obvious, 
there must be some familiarity with the things repre- 
sented, before the representation can be appreciated, then 
the representation can be completely appreciated only 
when the things represented are completely understood. 
The fact is that every additional truth which a work of 
art expresses gives an additional pleasure to the percipi- 
ent mind — a pleasure that is missed by those ignorant of 
this truth. The more realities an artist indicates in any 
given amount of work, the more faculties does he appeal 
to ; the more numerous ideas does he suggest ; the more 
gratification does he afford. But to receive this gratifica- 
tion the spectator, listener, or reader must know the 
realities which the artist has indicated ; and to know 
the realities is to have so much science. 



12 METHODS AND AIMS 

And now let us not overlook the further great fact that 
not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, 
poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opin- 
ion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. It 
is doubtless true that, as states of consciousness, cognition 
and emotion tend to exclude each other. And it is doubt- 
less also true that an extreme activity of the reflective 
powers tends to deaden the feelings ; while an extreme 
activity of the feelings tends' to deaden the reflective 
powers — in which sense, indeed, all orders of activity are 
antagonistic to each other. But it is not true that the 
facts of science are unpoetical, or that the cultivation of 
science is necessarily unfriendly to the exercise of imag- 
ination and the love of the beautiful. On the contrary, 
science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific 
all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches 
constantly show us that they realize, not less vividly, but 
more vividly, than others the poetry of their subjects. 
Whoso will dip into Hugh Miller's works of geology, 
or read Mr. Lewes' Seaside Studies, will perceive that 
science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And 
he who contemplates the life of Goethe must see that the 
poet and the man of science can coexist in equal activity. 
Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious 
belief that the more a man studies nature the less he 
reveres it ? Think you that a drop of water, which to 
the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in 
the eye of a physicist who knows that its elements are 
held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, 
would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that 
what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 13 

mere snowflake does not suggest higher associations to 
one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously 
varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals ? Think you 
that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls 
up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of 
a geologist who knows that over this rock a glacier slid 
a million years ago ? The truth is that those who have 
never entered upon scientific pursuits are blind to most of 
the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has 
not in youth collected plants and insects knows not half 
the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can as- 
sume. Whoever has not sought for fossils has little idea 
of the poetical associations that surround the places where 
imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside 
has not had a microscope and aquarium has yet to learn 
what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. . . . 

We find, then, that even for this remaining division of 
human activities, scientific culture is the proper prepara- 
tion. We find that aesthetics in general are necessarily 
based upon scientific principles, and can be pursued with 
complete success only through an acquaintance with these 
principles. We find that for the criticism and due appre- 
ciation of works of art a knowledge of the constitution of 
things, or in other words a knowledge of science, is requi- 
site. And we not only find that science is the handmaid 
to all forms of art and poetry, but that, rightly regarded, 
science is itself poetic. 1 

1 Herbert Spencer, What Knowledge is of most Worth ? {Essays on 
Education and Kindred Subjects, Everyman's Library, pp. 32 ff.). 



14 METHODS AND AIMS 

VI. LEONARDO DA VINCI ON METHOD IN THE 
ART OF PAINTING 

The young student should, in the first place, acquire a 
knowledge of perspective, to enable him to give to every 
object its proper dimensions ; after which it is requisite 
that he be under the care of an able master, to accustom 
him by degrees to a good style of drawing the parts. 
Next, he must study nature, in -order to confirm and fix 
in his mind the reason of those precepts which he has 
learned. He must also bestow some time in viewing the 
works of various old masters, to form his eye and judg- 
ment, in order that he may be able to put in practice all 
that he has been taught. 

The organ of sight is one of the quickest, and takes 
in at a single glance an infinite variety of forms ; not- 
withstanding which it cannot perfectly comprehend more 
than one object at a time. For example, the reader, at 
one look over this page, immediately perceives it full of 
different characters ; but he cannot at the same time 
distinguish each letter, much less can he comprehend 
their meaning. He must consider it word by word, and 
line by line, if he be desirous of forming a just no- 
tion of these characters. In like manner, if we wish to 
ascend to the top of an edifice, we must be content to 
advance step by step; otherwise we shall never be able 
to attain it. 

A young man, who has a natural inclination to the 
study of this art, I would advise to act thus : In order 
to acquire a true notion of the form of things, he must 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 15 

begin by studying the parts which compose them, and 
not pass to a second till he has well stored his memory, 
and sufficiently practised the first ; otherwise he loses 
his time, and will most certainly protract his studies. 
And let him remember to acquire accuracy before he 
attempts quickness. 

The cartilage which raises the nose in the middle of 
the face varies in eight different ways. It is equally 
straight, equally concave, or equally convex ; — which 
is the first sort. Or, secondly, unequally straight, con- 
cave, or convex. Or, thirdly, straight in the upper part, 
and concave in the under. Or, fourthly, straight in the 
upper part, and convex in those below. Or, fifthly, it 
may be concave above, and straight beneath. Or, sixthly, 
concave above, and convex below. Or, seventhly, it may 
be convex in the upper part, and straight in the lower. 
And, in the eighth and last place, convex above, and 
concave beneath. 

The uniting of the nose with the brows is in two 
ways : either it is straight, or concave. The forehead 
has three different forms : it is straight, concave, or 
round. The first is divided into two parts, viz. : it is 
either convex in the upper part, or in the lower — some- 
times both ; or else flat above and below. 

Those who become enamored of the practice of the 
art, without having previously applied to the diligent 
study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to 
mariners who put to sea in a ship without rudder or 
compass, and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at 
the wished-for port. 



1 6 METHODS AND AIMS 

Practice must always be founded on good theory ; to 
this, perspective is the guide and entrance, without 
which nothing can be well done. 1 

VII. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS ON METHOD 

Could we teach taste and genius by rules, they would 
be no longer taste and genius. But though there neither 
are, nor can be, any precise invariable rules for the exer- 
cise, or the acquisition, of these great qualities, yet we 
may truly say that they always operate in proportion to 
our attention in observing the works of nature, to our 
skill in selecting, and to our care in digesting, method- 
izing, and comparing our observations. There are many 
beauties in our art that seem, at first, to lie without the 
reach of precept, and yet may easily be reduced to prac- 
tical principles. Experience is all in all ; but it is not 
every one who profits by experience ; and most people 
err, not so much from want of capacity to find their ob- 
ject, as from not knowing what object to pursue. This 
great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought 
in the heavens, but upon the earth. They are about 
us, and upon every side of us. But the power of dis- 
covering what is deformed in nature, or in other words 
what is particular and uncommon, can be acquired only 
by experience ; and the whole beauty and grandeur of 
the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get 
above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, 
and details of every kind. 

1 Leonardo da Vinci, A Treatise on Painting (tr. John Francis 
Rigaud), pp. i, 2, 8, 37. London, 1877. 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 17 

All the objects which are exhibited to our view by na- 
ture, upon close examination will be found to have their 
blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms have 
something about them like weakness, minuteness, or im- 
perfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these 
blemishes. It must be an eye long used to the contem- 
plation and comparison of these forms ; and which, by 
a long habit of observing what any set of objects of the 
same kind have in common, has acquired the power of 
discerning what each wants in particular. This long 
laborious comparison should be the first study of the 
painter who aims at the greatest style. By this means 
he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms ; he corrects 
Nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more per- 
fect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental 
deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things from 
their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of 
their forms more perfect than any one original ; and, 
what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally 
by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This 
idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls 
the Ideal Beauty, is the great leading principle by which 
works of genius are conducted. By this Phidias acquired 
his fame. He wrought upon a sober principle what has 
so much excited the enthusiasm of the world. 1 

1 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fifteen Discourses on Art, The Third Dis- 
course. Compare the extracts from Boeckh, pp. 45, 46, 49 ff., and from 
the Symposium of Plato, pp. 2 2off. 



1 8 METHODS AND AIMS 

VIII. KENYON COX ON DESIGN IN PAINTING 

Perhaps the greatest weakness of modern art is the 
relative neglect of what is ordinarily called composition, 
or what I prefer to call by the good old word ' design.' 
The word ' composition ' means, of course, the putting to- 
gether of the picture, and seems to imply a more or less 
mechanical assemblage of separately existing parts. The 
word ' design ' conveys the finer and truer idea of an origi- 
nal guiding thought, a principle of unity, out of which 
the parts and details of a picture are developed by a nat- 
ural and organic growth. You compose a pudding or a 
black draught — you design a work of art. Yet the word 
' composition ' is a convenient one, and one so commonly 
understood that I shall use it interchangeably with the 
word ' design.' 

Whatever it is to be called, that the thing itself is 
rather out of fashion there can be no doubt. Our ten- 
dency has been to exalt the other parts of the art of paint- 
ing at the expense of this fundamental one of design, and 
to decry and belittle composition as a thing of small or no 
importance. Indeed, if one may believe all one hears, its 
very existence has been denied ; for a well-known and 
justly admired American painter has been quoted as tell- 
ing his pupils that ' There is no such thing as composi- 
tion.' If he ever said so, one is left in doubt as to just 
what he can have meant. It is possible that he intended 
to say that there is no science of composition, and no valid 
rules for it — that design is, and must be, a matter of in- 
stinct and of unconscious creative action on the part of 
the artist. In that case, what is true in his statement is 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 19 

equally true of drawing and color and handling. In all 
these things the business of the artist is to create, and to 
leave to others the task of finding out the reasons for the 
form of his creations. It is possible, in any art, to for- 
mulate principles to account for what has first been done 
— it is impossible, by the application of rules based on 
these principles, to create a new and vital work. This 
is not a reason for neglecting the study of the master- 
pieces of art, for ignorance was never yet creative. It 
is simply the statement, in another form, that the artist, 
however well trained, must be an artist born, and work 
as the artist has always worked. . . . 

Whatever else was meant, it is almost inconceivable 
that a literal denial of the existence of composition, or 
design, can have been intended, for that would have been 
the denial to the arts of the one thing they have in com- 
mon, of the one great fundamental and unifying principle 
that makes art art. Design is arrangement, is order, is 
selection. Design is the thing that makes a work of art a 
unit, that makes it a whole rather than a haphazard col- 
lection of unrelated things or a slice of unassimilated 
, nature. It does not merely concern itself with great deco- 
rative compositions or arrangements of many figures — 
it is necessarily present in the simplest problems art can 
set itself. Suppose you are to paint a portrait head. There 
will be questions of drawing, of character and expression, 
of light and shade and color, of the handling of your ma- 
terial, to all of which you must find answers ; but before 
you can consider any of these things, there will be the in- 
itial question : Where are you to place the head on your 
canvas ? How far from the top and the bottom, how far 



20 METHODS AND AIMS 

from the left- or right-hand border ? And what is the shape 
of your canvas to be, rectangular or circular or oval, and 
what shall be the proportion of height to width ? This is 
the fundamental problem of design, the problem of the 
division of space. . . . What is the general silhouette of 
your figure, and where shall it cut the borders of your 
canvas ? That is the problem of line. If you do not settle 
it intentionally and well, it will settle itself accidentally, 
and, in all probability, badly. The problems of design are 
essentially the same in everything you do ; they only 
become more complicated as the subject becomes more 
complex. 

If you are to paint a still life, it is evident that you must 
arrange the objects somehow — they will not come to- 
gether of themselves. You might, conceivably, begin a 
portrait, and wait for a happy accident — a spontaneous 
pose of the sitter — to give you the arrangement of the 
hands ; you cannot wait for the copper kettle and the 
dead fish to place themselves agreeably. And still less 
can nature or accident determine your composition of a 
number of figures, unless you rely entirely upon snap- 
shots. If you have any intention, any story to tell, any 
idea to express — if it is no more than the idea of a crowd 
— you must arrange your figures, well or ill. Even in 
landscape painting of the most naturalistic kind, where it 
is not uncommon to-day to accept what nature gives, abdi- 
cating the right to put in or leave out, and retaining only 
that right of choosing an agreeable view which the pho- 
tographer exercises equally with the painter — even there, 
though you may reproduce a natural landscape as literally 
as you are able, you must determine where to cut it off. . . . 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 21 

You cannot escape from design ; you cannot avoid com- 
posing. You may compose badly, but compose you must. 

And if the demands of design are fundamental, they are 
also universal. It is not only your lines and masses that 
must be composed, but your light and shade, your color, 
your very brush-marks must be arranged ; and the task 
of composition is not done until the last touch has been 
placed upon the canvas, although, for the sake of con- 
venience, the term ' composition,' or design, is generally 
limited to the arrangement of lines and masses, the ar- 
rangement of the other elements of the picture being 
considered separately. 

As design is the underlying and unifying principle of 
every work of art, so it is the classic principle, par excel- 
lence, the principle which makes for order and stability 
and clarity, and all that the classic spirit holds most 
dear. It is conservative in its nature, and tends to pre- 
serve the old molds even when new matter is put into 
them. It holds on to tradition, and keeps up the connec- 
tion with the past. It changes, but it changes more slowly 
than almost any other element of art. Great and original 
power of design is more rare than any other of the powers 
of an artist, and a radically new form of design is very 
nearly inconceivable. Artists will make a thousand new 
observations of nature, and almost entirely alter the con- 
tents of a work of art, before they make any but slight 
changes in the pattern in which it is cast ; and in all 
the history of painting the men are but a handful who 
have made any material addition to the resources of the 
designer. If in our own day we seem to have cut loose 
from tradition, and to have lost our connection with the 



22 METHODS AND AIMS 

great design of the past, it is not because we have sud- 
denly acquired a surprising degree of designing power, 
and are inventing a new and modern art of composition, 
but because most of us have forgotten altogether how to 
compose, and are trying to get on without any design at 
all ; the result being bad design and mere chaos. . . . 

It [design] is, of course, founded on natural laws, — on 
the laws of sight, and on the laws of the human mind, — 
but it is only accidentally and occasionally that it is di- 
rectly influenced by anything outside itself. The natural- 
istic temper will, as it has done at various times, lead to 
the neglect of composition ; it will not lead to new dis- 
coveries in composition. The study of anatomy revolu- 
tionized and greatly enriched the drawing of the human 
figure ; the study of natural light and color has added 
something to the resources of the painter, if it has also 
subtracted something from them ; the only study that has 
ever greatly helped the designer is the study of design as 
it has been practised before him. To look long at the 
great compositions of the master designers of the world ; 
to try to find in them, not hard and fast rules of what to 
do and what to avoid, but the guiding principles on which 
they are built ; to steep oneself in tradition ; and then 
to set oneself to invent new forms which shall be 
guided by the principles and contained within the bound- 
aries of the old — that is the only way to study design 

In all design concerned with the beautifying of sur- 
faces, as painting is, from the simplest treatment of orna- 
ment to the most complicated of naturalistic pictures, the 
ends to be sought, and the means of attaining these ends, 
are the same. First, there is the division of the whole 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 23 

space to be treated into a number of smaller spaces, or 
masses, which shall be agreeable in their relation to each 
other and of interesting and beautiful shapes. Some of 
these spaces will be filled with minor divisions and en- 
riched with details, while others will be left comparatively 
simple, like the background of ornament, and we have 
thus the balance of filled and empty spaces which is one of 
the great beauties of fine design. Some one of the masses 
will, by size, by position, or by isolation, sometimes by all 
three means, be made more important than the others, and 
this principle of subordination will be carried throughout 
the design, each mass which is subordinate to the princi- 
pal one having other attendant masses subordinated to it. 

After the division of space comes the unification by 
line. The whole composition will be bound together by a 
series of lines, either the edges of the masses or interior 
lines within them ; and these lines will not only be agree- 
able in themselves, but will be so arranged as to lead the 
eye, easily and without jar or fatigue, from one mass to 
another, bringing it finally to rest on the dominant mass 
of the composition. And these lines will have characters 
of their own, entirely apart from anything they may rep- 
resent. Horizontal lines will suggest repose, vertical lines 
will suggest rigidity and stability, curved lines will convey 
the idea of motion ; and the curves will differ among 
themselves, some being soft and voluptuous, others re- 
silient and tonic. 

In the use of these primary elements of composition a 
number of subsidiary principles will come into play : The 
principle of balance, either of like subordinate masses 
either side a central dominant, which is symmetrical and 



24 METHODS AND AIMS 

monumental composition, or of unlike masses at different 
distances from an ideal center, which is free or pictorial 
composition, though the Japanese use it in ornament ; the 
principle of repetition, the extreme form of which is the 
continuous frieze or border, but which is constantly used in 
pictures ; the principle of contrast, the straight line mak- 
ing the curve seem more graceful, the curve making the 
straight line seem more uncompromising and more rigid. 

The structure of the design being thus formed, it will 
be enriched and re-enforced by the use of light and dark 
and by the use of color. In a simple panel of ornament. 
for instance, the filled spaces, that is, the ornament itself, 
will be either darker or lighter than the ground or empty 
spaces ; or they will be of a different color from the 
empty spaces, without any greatly marked difference of 
value. Or the filled spaces may be both lighter and 
darker than the ground, as they would be in sculpture in 
relief. The dominance of the most important mass may 
be increased by making it the lightest, or the darkest, or 
the most powerfully colored mass, or by giving it the 
sharpest contrast of light and dark ; and however this is 
done, certain of the subsidiary masses will be given a sec- 
ondary importance by a less marked use of the same means. 

So far the process is identical, whether the content of 
the design is pure ornament or a great figure painting; 
but as we approach the free design of the easel picture 
a new element comes into play. Ornamental design is 
design in two dimensions only, and decorative painting 
always tends to retain, or to return to, two-dimensional 
compositions. But in proportion as painting becomes de- 
sirous and able to convey the illusion of space, it begins 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 25 

to compose in the third dimension also. The things it 
represents have not only an elevation, but a ground-plan, 
and the ground-plan must be as thoroughly designed as 
the elevation. The distances of one mass from another in 
the direction of the depth of the picture must be as care- 
fully proportioned as the vertical and lateral distances, 
and the lines traced upon the ideal ground-plan must be 
as beautiful as those visible upon the vertical surface. 

These are, as well as I can explain them in brief com- 
pass, the immutable principles of design : few in number, 
but admitting of so much variety in their application that 
all the great compositions that have ever been made have 
not begun to exhaust the possible combinations — there is 
room for an infinite number of fine compositions still. 
The extent to which these principles govern the work of 
the great designers is almost incredible until one has con- 
vinced oneself of it by prolonged study. Their scope is 
co-extensive with the work, and in the masterpieces of 
design there is absolutely no room for accident. Every 
smallest detail, each fold of drapery, each leaf in each 
smallest spray of leafage, is where it must be, and is of its 
proper form and inevitable size to play its part in the sym- 
phony of design. It could no more be somewhere else, or 
of some other shape, than a note could be of another pitch 
in a musical composition. Any change in it would change 
the character of the whole. Designs of this perfection are 
rare, of course, but they exist ; and in some of the composi- 
tions of Raphael and Veronese you could not change so 
much as a tendril of hair or a ring on a finger without loss. 1 

1 Kenyon Cox, The Classic Point of View, pp. 77—93. New York, 
191 1. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 



26 METHODS AND AIMS 

IX. SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK ON PERSONALITY 
AND METHOD 

It is an open secret to the few who know it, but a 
mystery and a stumbling-block to the many, that Science 
and Poetry are own sisters ; insomuch that in those 
branches of scientific inquiry which are most abstract, 
most formal, and most remote from the grasp of the 
ordinary sensible imagination, a higher power of imagi- 
nation akin to the creative insight of the poet is most 
needed and most fruitful of lasting work. This living 
and constructive energy projects itself out into the world 
at the same time that it assimilates the surrounding world 
to itself. When it is joined with quick perception and 
delicate sympathies, it can work the miracle of piercing 
the barrier that separates one mind from another, and 
becomes a personal charm. It can be known only in its 
operation, and is by its very nature incommunicable and 
indescribable. Yet this faculty, when a man is gifted with 
it, seems to gather up the best of his life, so that the man 
always transcends every work shapen and sent forth by 
him ; his presence is full of it, and it lightens the air 
his friends breathe ; it commands, not verbal assent to 
propositions or intellectual acquiescence in arguments, 
but the conviction of being in the sphere of a vital force 
for which nature must make room. 1 

1 From the Introduction to Lectures and Essays by the late Kingdon 
Clifford, 1 90 1. 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 27 

X. SHALER ON THE METHOD OF AGASSIZ 

When I first met Louis Agassiz he was still in the 
prime of his admirable manhood ; though he was then 
fifty-two years old, and had passed his constructive period, 
he still had the look of a young man. His face was the 
most genial and engaging that I had ever seen, and his 
manner captivated me altogether. But as I had been 
among men who had a free swing, and for a year among 
people who seemed to be cold and super-rational, hungry 
as I doubtless was for human sympathy, Agassiz 's wel- 
come went to my heart — I was at once his captive. It 
has been my good chance to see many men of engaging 
presence and ways, but I have never known his equal. 

As the personal quality of Agassiz was the greatest of 
his powers, and as my life was greatly influenced by my 
immediate and enduring affection for him, I am tempted 
to set forth some incidents which show that my swift 
devotion to my new-found master was not due to the 
accidents of the situation or to any boyish fancy. I will 
content myself with one of those stories, which will of 
itself show how easily he captivated men, even those of 
the ruder sort. Some years after we came together, when 
indeed I was formally his assistant, — I believe it was in 
1 866, — he became much interested in the task of com- 
paring the skeletons of thoroughbred horses with those 
of common stock. I had at his request tried, but without 
success, to obtain the bones of certain famous stallions 
from my acquaintances among the racing men of Ken- 
tucky. Early one morning there was a fire, supposed to 
be incendiary, in the stables in the Beacon Park track, a 



28 METHODS AND AIMS 

mile from the College, in which a number of horses had 
been killed, and many badly scorched. I had just returned 
from the place, where I had left a mob of irate owners 
and jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding 
some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a 
valuable lot of stallions for the museum, but it was evident 
that the time was most inopportune for suggesting such 
a disposition of the remains. Had I done so, the results 
would have been, to say the least, unpleasant. 

As I came away from the profane lot of horse-men 
gathered about the ruins of their fortunes or their hopes, 
I met Agassiz almost running to seize the chance of 
specimens. I told him to come back with me, that we 
must wait until the mob had spent its rage ; but he kept 
on. I told him further that he risked spoiling his good 
chance, and finally that he would have his head punched ; 
but he trotted on. I went with him, in the hope that I 
might protect him from the consequences of his curiosity. 
When we reached the spot, there came about a marvel ; 
in a moment he had all those raging men at his com- 
mand. He went at once to work with the horses which 
had been hurt, but were savable. His intense sympathy 
with the creatures, his knowledge of the remedies to be 
applied, his immediate appropriation of the whole situa- 
tion, of which he was at once the master, made those rude 
folk at once his friends. Nobody asked who he was, for 
the good reason that he was heart and soul of them. 
When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skil- 
fully came to the point of his business, — the skeletons, — 
and this so dextrously and sympathetically, that the men 
were, as it seemed, ready to turn over the living as well 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 29 

as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of 
human doing, much of it critically as actor or near ob- 
server, but this was in many ways the greatest. The 
supreme art of it was in the use of a perfectly spon- 
taneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an 
end. With others, this state of mind would lead to affec- 
tation ; with him, it in no wise diminished the quality of 
the emotion. He could measure the value of -the motive, 
but do it without lessening its moral import. 

As my account of Agassiz's quality should rest upon 
my experiences with him, I shall now go on to tell how 
and to what effect he trained me. In that day there were 
no written examinations on any subjects to which candi- 
dates for the Lawrence Scientific School had to pass. The 
professors in charge of the several departments questioned 
the candidates, and determined their fitness to pursue the 
course of study they desired to undertake. Few or none 
who had any semblance of an education were denied ad- 
mission to Agassiz's laboratory. ... So I was promptly 
assured that I was admitted. Be it said, however, that he 
did give me an effective oral examination, which, as he 
told me, was intended to show whether I could expect to 
go forward to a degree at the end of four years of study. 
On this matter of the degree he was obdurate, refusing to 
recommend some who had been with him for many years, 
and had succeeded in their special work, giving as reason 
for his denial that they were ' too ignorant.' 

The examination Agassiz gave me was directed first to 
find that I knew enough Latin and Greek to make use 
of those languages ; that I could patter a little of them 
evidently pleased him. He did n't care for those detestable 



30 METHODS AND AIMS 

rules for scanning. Then came German and French, 
which were also approved ; I could read both, and spoke 
the former fairly well. He did not probe me in my weakest 
place, mathematics, for the good reason that, badly as I 
was off in that subject, he was in a worse plight. Then 
asking me concerning my reading, he found that I had 
read the essay on classification, and had noted in it the 
influence of Schelling's views. Most of his questioning 
related to this field, and the more than fair beginning of 
our relations then made was due to the fact that I had 
some enlargement on that side. So, too, he was pleased 
to find that I had managed a lot of Latin, Greek, and 
German poetry, and had been trained with the sword. He 
completed this inquiry by requiring that I bring my foils 
and masks for a bout. In this test he did not fare well, 
for, though not untrained, he evidently knew more of the 
Schldger than of the rapier. He was heavy-handed and 
lacked finesse. This, with my previous experience, led 
me to the conclusion that I had struck upon a kind of 
tutor in Cambridge not known in Kentucky. 

While Agassiz questioned me carefully as to what I 
had read and what I had seen, he seemed in this prelim- 
inary going over in no wise concerned to find what I 
knew about fossils, rocks, animals, and plants ; he put 
aside the offerings of my scanty lore. This offended me 
a bit, as I recall, for the reason that I thought I knew, 
and for a self-taught lad really did know, a good deal 
about such matters, especially as to the habits of insects, 
particularly spiders. It seemed hard to be denied the 
chance to make my parade ; but I afterward saw what 
this meant — that he did not intend to let me begin my 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 31 

tasks by posing as a naturalist. The beginning was in- 
deed quite different, and, as will be seen, in a manner 
that quickly evaporated my conceit. It was made and 
continued in a way I will now recount. 

Agassiz's laboratory was then in a rather small two- 
storied building looking much like a square dwelling- 
house, which stood where the College Gymnasium now 
stands. . . . Agassiz had recently moved into it from a 
shed on the marsh near Brighton bridge, the original 
tenants, the engineers, having come to riches in the shape 
of the brick structure now known as the Lawrence Build- 
ing. In this primitive establishment Agassiz's laboratory, 
as distinguished from the storerooms where the collections 
were crammed, occupied one room about thirty feet long 
and fifteen feet wide — what is now the west room on the 
lower floor of the edifice. In this place, already packed, 
I had assigned to me a small pine table with a rusty tin 
pan upon it. . . . 

When I sat me down before my tin pan, Agassiz 
brought me a small fish, placing it before me with the 
rather stern requirement that I should study it, but should 
on no account talk to any one concerning it, nor read any- 
thing relating to fishes, until I had his permission to do 
so. To my inquiry, * What shall I do ? ' he said in effect : 
1 Find out what you can without damaging the specimen ; 
when I think that you have done the work, I will question 
you.' In the course of an hour I thought I had compassed 
that fish ; it was rather an unsavory object, giving forth 
the stench of old alcohol, then loathsome to me, though in 
time I came to like it. Many of the scales were loosened 
so that they fell off. It appeared to me to be a case for a 



32 METHODS AND AIMS 

summary report, which I was anxious to make and get on 
to the next stage of the business. But Agassiz, though 
always within call, concerned himself no further with me 
that day, nor the next, nor for a week. At first, this 
neglect was distressing ; but I saw that it was a game, for 
he was, as I discerned rather than -saw, covertly watching 
me. So I set my wits to work upon the thing, and in the 
course of a hundred hours or so thought I had done much 
— a hundred times as much as seemed possible at the 
start. I got interested in finding out how the scales went 
in series, their shape, the form and placement of the teeth, 
etc. Finally, I felt full of the subject, and probably ex- 
pressed it in my bearing ; as for words about it, then, 
there were none from my master except his cheery c Good 
morning.' At length, on the seventh day, came the ques- 
tion, ' Well ? ' and my disgorge of learning to him as he sat 
on the edge of my table, puffing his cigar. At the end of 
the hour's telling, he swung off and away, saying : ' That 
is not right.' Here I began to think that, after all, perhaps 
the rules for scanning Latin verse were not the worst inflic- 
tion in the world. Moreover, it was clear that he was play- 
ing a game with me to find if I were capable of doing hard, 
continuous work without the support of a teacher, and this 
stimulated me to labor. I went at the task anew, discarded 
my first notes, and in another week of ten hours a day 
labor I had results which astonished myself, and satisfied 
him. Still there was no trace of praise in word or manner. 
He signified that it would do by placing before me about 
a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I could 
make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I 
soon found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 33 

fishes of different species — the jaws told me so much at a 
first inspection. The task evidently was to fit the separate 
bones together in their proper order. Two months or 
more went to this task, with no other help than an occa- 
sional looking over my grouping, with the stereotyped 
remark : ' That is not right.' Finally, the task was done, 
and I was again set upon alcoholic specimens — this 
time a remarkable lot of specimens, representing perhaps 
twenty species of the side-swimmers or Pleuronectidae. 

I shall never forget the sense of power in dealing 
with things which I felt in beginning the more extended 
work on a group of animals. I had learned the art of 
comparing objects, which is the basis of the naturalist's 
work. At this stage I was allowed to read and to discuss 
my work with others about me. I did both eagerly, and 
acquired a considerable knowledge of the literature of 
ichthyology, becoming especially interested in the system 
of classification, then most imperfect. I tried to follow 
Agassiz's scheme of division into the order of ctenoids 
and ganoids, with the result that I found one of my 
species of side-swimmers had cycloid scales on one side 
and ctenoid on the other. This not only shocked my 
sense of the value of classification in a way that permitted 
of no full recovery of my original respect for the process, 
but for a time shook my confidence in my master's 
knowledge. At the same time I had a malicious pleas- 
ure in exhibiting my find to him, expecting to repay in 
part the humiliation which he had evidently tried to 
inflict on my conceit. To my question as to how the 
nondescript should be classified, he said : ' My boy, there 
are now two of us who know that.' 



34 METHODS AND AIMS 

This incident of the fish made an end of my novitiate. 
After that, with a suddenness of transition which puzzled 
me, Agassiz became very communicative ; we passed, in- 
deed, into the relation of friends of like age and purpose, 
and he actually consulted me as to what I should like 
to take up as a field of study. Finding that I wished to 
devote myself to geology, he set me to work on the 
Brachiopoda as the best group of fossils to serve as 
data in determining the Palaeozoic horizons. So far as 
his rather limited knowledge of the matter went, he 
guided me in the field about Cambridge, in my reading, 
and to acquaintances of his who were concerned with 
earth structures. 1 

XL THE METHOD OF JOHN SHERREN BREWER 

From about the time of his appointment to this office 
at the Rolls Chapel, the principal work of his life was 
divided between original historical studies at the Rolls 
Office and lectures on history and literature at King's 
College, London. He was entrusted by the Master of the 
Rolls with the task of calendaring the papers in the Pub- 
lic Records relating to the reign of Henry the Eighth, 
and during the whole remainder of his life he devoted 
himself to this duty with an energy and a generosity to 
which justice can be done only by those who, from their 
own experience, are able to understand the immense labor 
as well as learning which it needed. . . . 

At the time of Henry the Eighth's reign, the old and 
the new influences are seen in mortal struggle for the 

1 Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, Autobiography, pp. 93-100. 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 35 

mastery, and to do justice to the drama it is essential for 
the historian to be in sympathy with both sides. Nothing 
was more remarkable in Mr. Brewer's mind than its 
capacity in this respect. He was a distinguished Aristo- 
telian scholar, and thoroughly appreciated the grandeur 
of the vast logical structures which were raised by the 
theologians of the Middle Ages ; but at the same time 
he was a devoted disciple of Lord Bacon, read his chief 
works incessantly, and endeavored to follow the Baconian 
methods in all his studies and thoughts. Similarly, 
although deeply read in patristic theology, and, in accord- 
ance with his Oxford training, an appreciative disciple of 
the Caroline divines, he became an enthusiastic admirer 
of Luther, and, as is proved by the notes in his copy of 
the Jena edition of Luther's works, had studied him mi- 
nutely. He regarded him as holding in theology a some- 
what similar position to that of Bacon in philosophy — 
equally the author of an Instauratio Magna. Add to this 
that he was a thorough Englishman in all his sympathies 
and tastes, and it will be seen what rare qualifications he 
possessed for the task he undertook. 

His labors over the materials of his work gave him, 
moreover, one other advantage which, in all probability, 
will never be enjoyed by any one again. The calendars 
he edited contain an analysis, in chronological order, of 
every known document relating to Henry the Eighth's 
reign ; and for this purpose he himself read them all 
through. Now that they have been analyzed, it is most 
unlikely that any one else will go through the same labor. 
Yet the actual perusal of such documents is like the 
personal examination of witnesses, and must afford a 



36 METHODS AND AIMS 

more vivid, living, and accurate perception of their pur- 
port than can possibly be obtained at second hand. For 
years Mr. Brewer lived in daily intercourse, as it were, 
with the chief actors in the reign of Henry the Eighth. 
He read their private letters, and followed them into 
numberless details of their daily lives. He had a special 
gift for reading character ; and the impressions of the 
men, and of the events of the reign, which such a man 
received amidst such exceptional opportunities, must needs 
possess a unique value. 

These impressions he communicated to the public in 
a series of prefaces to the calendars, which constitute, 
when combined, a complete history of the reign to the 
death of Wolsey. He entered with too much enthusiasm 
into the work to be content with a mere prefatory sketch 
of the contents of each volume. He cast into the form of 
a finished historical narrative the results of his tedious 
research, and upon the composition of this narrative he 
bestowed an immense amount of time and labor which 
were in no way required of him in the discharge of his 
official duty. . . . 

But, as has been mentioned, in addition to his work at 
the Rolls Office, Mr. Brewer was for the long period of 
thirty-eight years, from 1839 till 1877, engaged as a 
lecturer and professor at King's College, London. In 
1839 he was appointed lecturer in classical literature. 
In 1855 he became professor of the English language 
and literature, and lecturer in modern history ; and the 
latter two subjects being for a time combined, he be- 
came, in 1865, professor of English literature and modern 
history. It illustrates the wide range and versatility of 



^ 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 37 

his mind that he should thus have passed from classics 
to modern history and English literature, and that he 
should have been equally successful in giving instruction 
in each subject. The transition corresponded very much 
with a change in his own intellectual interests, and with 
the increasing concentration of his attention on modern 
history and modern literature. He retained, indeed, to 
the last his affection for the classics, always maintaining 
that as a means of training for the mind English was not 
equal to Latin and Greek. When students at King's 
College asked to be excused classical lectures that they 
might give more attention to Mr. Brewer's lectures in 
English, the classical teacher would send them to Mr. 
Brewer, well knowing what he would say to such an 
application. But his main characteristics as a teacher 
were the same, whatever the subject in hand. The most 
remarkable of these was his habit of placing himself side 
by side, as it were, with his pupils, and teaching them as 
a fellow-learner of superior knowledge and power, rather 
than as a master with a right to dictate to them. In his 
classical lectures, for instance, ... he would go through 
very little of his author at a time — some ten or twenty 
lines, perhaps, of Horace in a lecture ; and he would dis- 
cuss every word with us, eliciting our own knowledge or 
lack of knowledge respecting it, and, with the dictionary be- 
fore him, leading us step by step through the process which 
we ought to have gone through for ourselves. He checked 
at once those facile off-hand approximations to the mean- 
ing of a word or sentence with which beginners are too 
apt to be content ; and thus from the first he made every 
thoughtful student realize in some measure the depth and 



38 METHODS AND AIMS 

complexity of the language of a great writer. He treated 
words with just the same laborious, patient, and pene- 
trating observation which a man of science bestows upon 
the simple facts of nature ; and in his company we 
learned one of the first great lessons of study — not 
merely our own ignorance as individuals, but the compar- 
ative ignorance even of those who know most. Though 
he knew so much more than we did, he always spoke and 
acted as if he were as much a learner as we were. The 
consequence of this modest thoroughness in his way of 
teaching was that a term or two under him in such a sub- 
ject as classics placed a capable student in a position in 
which he could study successfully by himself. Instead of 
merely acquiring a store of opinions and facts, he had got 
hold of the true method of working, and had been shown 
how to thread his way through the labyrinth. Mr. Brewer 
wrote Latin prose with singular elegance, and was a most 
severe critic of translations both from and into Latin and 
Greek. But the pupil whose work was being criticized, or 
rewritten, saw his master's mind at work in all the details 
of the process, and learned not merely what the result 
ought to be, but what were the reasons for it, and the 
means of producing it. 

One other source of his influence over his pupils 
should be mentioned. The instrument he employed to 
urge and control them was praise and not blame. Many 
a young man left the lecture-room with better hopes for 
himself and the future because Mr. Brewer had detected 
and praised in his work some merit of which he was him- 
self unconscious. ' The young men,' he would sometimes 
say, ' see visions ; the old men dream dreams.' Perhaps 



OX METHOD IN GENERAL 39 

such a discipline ran some risk of giving undue encour- 
agement to youthful vanity. But his vigilant and critical 
judgment was ever at hand to check this danger ; and the 
more frequent influence of such training was to induce 
young men to put forth for adventure in thought and 
action who would otherwise have stayed with folded 
hands at home. 

Of his method in teaching history two of [his] essays 
. . . will afford the best conception — those On the Study 
of History in general and On the Study of English 
History in particular. What is most conspicuous in them 
is the characteristic just noticed in his classical teaching. 
Instead of giving accounts of historical events, or of 
their bearings, on his own authority, he seemed to take 
his pupils by the hand, leading them to the best points 
of view from which to survey the historical drama, and 
then to make them feel that it told its own tale to careful 
and thoughtful observation. He would begin by fixing 
their attention on the main facts and outlines of a period 
or a reign, and would draw out of those leading facts, 
bv a kind of historic induction, the great influences which 
were at work. He was still the companion of his pupils, 
pointing out to them, at every turn, not so much what 
he himself saw, as what they could see themselves if 
they were patient and thoughtful. . . . He held with 
unabated confidence to his conviction that the main facts 
of history, and the lessons to be drawn from them, are in- 
dependent of conflicting interpretations of its details ; and 
nothing was more characteristic of his teaching than the 
clearness with which he brought out these leading facts, 
and made his pupils feel that they were independent 



40 METHODS AND AIMS 

of his own opinion, or of the partial views of any his- 
torian. The great outlines of history in his hands assumed 
forms as clear and distinct as the leading facts of any 
natural science, and he made it felt that they could be 
accepted with similar confidence. 

His researches, indeed, into the reign of Henry the 
Eighth led him to one conclusion which seems particu- 
larly worth mention, and which affords a very remarkable 
and instructive illustration of these views of the true 
method of interpreting history. He had penetrated, as 
we have said, into all the details of Henry the Eighth's 
reign with a completeness which had never before been 
possible ; and the result, contrary to his own anticipation, 
was to confirm the general truth of the view of that 
reign presented by the two writers who had up to a 
recent date been the most popular authorities respecting 
it. The best sketch, he said, of Henry the Eighth's 
reign anywhere to be found is afforded by Shakespeare's 
play ; and next in value to this he reckoned the narrative 
of Hume. . . . 

There was, however, one other subject on which Mr. 
Brewer was perhaps even more interesting and instructive 
than as a historian and historical lecturer. That subject 
was English literature, which, as has been mentioned, 
was combined for some time with the other work of his 
chair at King's College. It offered scope for the exer- 
cise of all his capacities — as a scholar, a historian, a 
philosopher, a theologian, a man of letters, and one 
who had seen a good deal of the world. There was 
not a single writer of any consequence with whom he 
did not feel some native sympathy, and he loved to 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 41 

interpret them all, in their various bearings, in that 
patient inductive style which characterized him in all 
his work. Here, again, he adhered to his general method 
in teaching. He selected the great authors of the suc- 
cessive periods of our history, and their leading works, 
and concentrated the attention of his pupils upon them. 
When these were known and understood, the rest, he 
knew, would fall into their right places and find their 
level. He was fond of Lord Bacon's saying, that litera- 
ture is the eye of history, enabling us, as nothing else 
can, to penetrate into the depths of its life ; and to 
study a great author with him was to live again amidst 
all the influences of a former age. 

One of the most valuable points, accordingly, in his 
method of teaching English literature was that he was 
never content with lecturing about authors. He would 
read in class portions of their greatest works with the 
same minute thoroughness as he used to bestow, when 
a classical teacher, upon the great writers of Greece 
and Rome ; he would take his class into fellowship with 
himself, invite opinions from them, enter into discussion 
with them, and thus introduce them, with all the pleasure 
of conscious companionship, into the very heart and life 
of the book before them. Looking back on his lectures 
twenty-five years ago upon such authors as Shakespeare, 
Lord Bacon, Milton, Dryden, Pope, or Coleridge, it is 
difficult, notwithstanding his own belief, already men- 
tioned, in the essential superiority of classical training, 
to doubt that English literature might be so treated as 
to become almost as powerful an instrument of education 
as the literature of Greece and Rome — that it might 



42 METHODS AND AIMS 

exert an almost equal influence in giving accuracy, thor- 
oughness, and depth to the mind, while it would often 
lay a more powerful grasp upon the heart. . . . 

Such were his public occupations. But in addition 
to these he accomplished an immense amount of private 
literary work. ... 

Strange to say, with all this work upon his hands, 
he was ever at leisure to a favorite friend or pupil, and 
would spare an hour at almost any time for an inter- 
change of thought with them. On each visit his con- 
versation would be like one of his old friendly lectures, 
delivered, as the Oxford Statutes have it, sine ulla solen- 
nitate. No matter how young his visitor might be, he 
would talk to him as if he were on an equality with 
himself, and, while pouring out his stores of learning 
and reflection, would be ever endeavoring to elicit thought 
and information from his hearer. His modesty in this 
respect was one of his most remarkable characteristics. 
Genuine modesty is rare, and is very different from 
the quality, however laudable, of sincerely endeavoring 
to be modest. Mr. Brewer, in all his conversation and 
intercourse with others, acted and spoke as if he were 
learning from them, when in point of fact, as they 
might accidentally discover at a later time, he had an 
acquaintance with the subject under discussion in com- 
parison with which their own was insignificant. There 
was nothing whatever artificial in this attitude. By that 
respect for other minds and other natures which made 
him treat his pupils as if they were fellow-students with 
himself, he was led to treat all genuine students, and 
all thoughtful companions, as capable of teaching him 



ON METHOD IN GENERAL 43 

something even in the subjects he knew best. He would 
be vigorous, and sometimes amusingly positive, in stating 
his own views, but he was none the less eager to learn 
from even the rawest and least instructed companion ; 
and one would often be surprised to find at the next 
interview that he had really been pondering over some 
suggestion which, at the time it was thrown out, he 
had summarily overridden. 1 

1 J. S. Brewer, English Studies. Prefatory Memoir by Henry Wace, 
pp. xvi-xxxiv. 



II 

ON METHOD IN THE STUDY OF 
LITERATURE 

I. LEIGH HUNT ON RECONSTRUCTING THE 
SPIRIT OF THE PAST 

We have the greatest contempt for learning, merely so 
called ; together with the greatest respect for it when it 
sees through the dead letter of time and words into the 
spirit that concerns all ages and all descriptions of men. 
Every clever unlearned man in England, rich and poor, if 
we had the magic to do it, should be gifted to-morrow 
with all the learning that would adorn and endear his 
commerce to him, his agriculture, and the poorest flower- 
pot at his window. . . . Spirit is everything, and letter is 
nothing, except inasmuch as it is a vehicle for spirit. 1 

A little hearty love is better in this, as in all other 
cases, than a heap of indifferent knowledge. We are 
ashamed to say that we know less of Greek, in one sense 
of the word, than we did when young, and are obliged to 
look out more words in the dictionary ; for to a dictionary 
we are still forced to resort, though we love the language 
next to Italian, and hold it in higher admiration. But 
then we know our ignorance better than we did at that 
time ; are more aware of beauties to be enjoyed, and 

1 A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla (London, 1897), pp. 15, 16. 
44 



METHOD IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE 45 

nice meanings to be discovered ; and the consequence is 
that, whenever we undertake to translate a passage from 
Greek, we take our love on one side of us, and our dic- 
tionary on the other, and, before we set about it, make a 
point of sifting every possible meaning and root of mean- 
ing, not excepting those in words the most familiar to us, 
in order that not an atom of the writer's intention may be 
missed. We do not say, of course, that we always succeed 
in detecting it ; but it is not for want of painstaking. 

The labor we delight in physics pain. 

Now by a like respect for the good old maxim of ' slow and 
sure,' and by dint of doing a little, or even a very little, 
every day, there is no lover of poetry and beauty who in 
the course of a few months might not be as deep as a 
bee in some of the sweetest flowers of other languages. 1 

II. AUGUST BOECKH ON INTERPRETATION AND 

CRITICISM AS THE TWO DISTINCT FUNCTIONS 

IN THE STUDY OF THE PAST 

The process of understanding is ... on the one hand, 
absolute, on the other, relative. That is, every object 
must be understood, on the one hand, in and for itself; 
on the other, it must be understood in relation to other 
objects. This latter is accomplished by means of an 
act of judging, through the establishment of a relation 
between a part and the whole, or between one part and 
another, or through reference to an ideal. Absolute 
understanding is the function of Interpretation ; relative 

1 A far of Honey from Mount Hybla (London, 1897), pp. 7, 8. 



46 METHODS AND AIMS 

understanding, the function of Criticism. Under Inter- 
pretation is necessarily included every kind of explanation 

— grammatical, logical, historical, aesthetic ; and under 
Criticism, every kind — higher and lower criticism, and 
so on ; . . . for from the nature of the general conception 
it is simply inevitable that 'the entire formal side of philol- 
ogy [the study of language and literature] should be 
comprised in these two functions. 1 

III. PROFESSOR COOK'S ADAPTATION OF BOECKH 
TO THE STUDY OF A PARTICULAR MASTERPIECE 

The study of a piece of literature, as distinguished 
from cursory reading of it, may be directed to either one 
of two principal ends — interpretation, or criticism. The 
object of interpretation is the understanding of the work 

— as a whole, in its organism, and in its details. The 
object of criticism is the judgment of the work, with 
reference both to its merits and defects. The object of 
both interpretation and criticism is intelligent admiration 

— admiration of that, and that alone, which is truly and 
eternally admirable. 

Whatever study concerns itself with either of these two 
ends, interpretation or criticism, is literary study. That 
which is directed to other ends, or to no particular ends, 
may be useful in its way, and with reference to its own 
purposes, but has no right to be considered literary study. 

The problem of literary teaching consists in the appor- 
tionment and adjustment to one another of the various 

1 Boeckh, Encyclopadie und Methodologie der Philologischen Wissen- 
schqften, p. 55. 



METHOD IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE 47 

forms of interpretation and criticism. For its solution no 
precise rules can be given ; yet one statement can be 
made with confidence — that the ambitious, but untrained 
and inexperienced, teacher is likely to fall into one of two 
cardinal and opposite errors : either he will aim at an 
analysis too particularistic, and lose sight of the whole in 
a consideration of details or constituent parts ; or he will 
indulge in a synthesis too large, too vague, possibly too 
sentimental, and in any case not sufficiently built up and 
elaborated by and with his pupils. 

To return to the two main divisions of interpretation 
and criticism. Interpretation is basic, and in its nature 
precedes criticism. Criticism is supplementary, but indis- 
pensable to any literary culture which aspires to thor- 
oughness. Interpretation involves the making clear to 
oneself of the meaning and function of the various con- 
stituent elements of a given piece of literature, and of the 
piece of literature as a whole. These constituent elements 
are such as words, sentences, and paragraphs ; the organic 
divisions of a work of literary art, such as the Exordium, 
Statement of Facts, Proof, etc., of an oration ; quotations 
or allusions ; and figures of speech. On each of these 
attention should be bestowed. . . . 

Criticism, from its very nature, implies comparison — 
comparison with principles assumed or deduced ; compar- 
ison with other productions of the same class ; or, with 
respect to the opinions enounced by the author, com- 
parison with the statements or opinions of other persons 
worthy of credence or respect. Thus the structure of 
Burke's speech might be studied with reference to its 
conformity or non-conformity to principles deduced from 



48 METHODS AND AIMS 

the practice of the ancients, or the speech might be 
systematically compared with other eminent examples of 
its class, ancient or modern, and its superiority or inferi- 
ority demonstrated. The style might be examined with 
respect to various qualities, and its specific merits deter- 
mined. All information directly tending to confirm or 
disprove the statements, assumptions, or conclusions pro- 
pounded by Burke would also be valuable in its bearing 
upon criticism, since it would increase the ability of the 
student to determine the trustworthiness of Burke as a 
guide. Finally, the estimates thus formed by the student 
might be carefully compared with those expressed by critics 
of established reputation, both among Burke's contempo- 
raries and those of subsequent date. . . . 

Both interpretation and criticism, at least in the case of 
a master-work like Burke's Speech on Conciliation, demand 
strenuous exercise of the intellectual faculties, as well as 
continual appeals to the moral nature. The combination 
of these two kinds of study ought to strengthen the 
reasoning powers, develop the imagination, cultivate the 
nobler sensibilities, and fortify the character. 1 

1 Burke, Speech on Conciliation (ed. Albert S. Cook), pp. Ixi-lxiii. New 
York, 1896. By permission of Longmans, Green, & Co. 



METHOD IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE 49 

IV. BOECKH ON THE RELATION OF ENCYCLO- 
PAEDIA TO METHODOLOGY 

[For Boeckh, philology means the reconstruction of the past, the 
re-experiencing what has been known and felt by the human spirit ; 
and science means the whole field of human knowledge.] 

It would be a great error to regard an Encyclopaedia 
[or circle of learning] as such as a Methodology [or form 
of procedure], too. Whereas the encyclopaedia has a 
purely theoretical, scientific aim, the methodology has an- 
other ; namely, to indicate how one is to acquire the 
theory. The encyclopaedia furnishes the general struc- 
ture of the science ; it blocks out the whole with great 
lines and strokes. But the person who wishes to study 
a science cannot possibly advance straightway upon the 
whole. Nor can the encyclopaedia, as it were, supplant a 
methodology by permitting one to study the separate dis- 
ciplines in the encyclopaedic order. And, were it possible, 
still it would not be to the purpose. The encyclopaedia 
starts out with the most general conceptions ; the stu- 
dent cannot start out with these — he must take the 
very opposite course. Whereas the encyclopaedia de- 
rives and explains the particular from the general, the 
student must first of all corne to know the particular 
as the basis and substance of ideas, and from the par- 
ticular alone can he ascend to the general, if he is really 
to build up the science within himself, and not merely 
to take it at second hand. This follows from the con- 
ception of philology ; for in historical investigation the 
general is the final result ; but the encyclopaedia assumes 
and presents this result. 



50 METHODS AND AIMS 

A person who wished first to acquire a general survey 
of the science, that is, to acquire the encyclopaedia, and 
then gradually to descend to details, would never attain to 
sound and exact knowledge, but would endlessly disperse 
his activities, and, knowing many things, would yet know 
little. Schelling, in his Methodology of Academical Study, 
remarks with great justice that, in history, to start out 
with a universal survey of the past is in the highest 
degree useless and injurious, since it gives one nothing 
but compartments for knowledge, without anything to fill 
them. In history, his advice is, first to studyone period 
in detail, and from this gradually to broaden out in all 
directions. For philology, which coincides with history 
in its most general sense, a similar procedure is, in the 
light of methodology, the only right one. Everything in 
science is related ; although science itself is endless, yet 
the whole system is pervaded with sympathies and corre- 
spondences. Let the student place himself where he will, 
— so long as he selects something significant and worth 
while, — and he will be compelled to broaden out from 
this point of departure in every direction in order to 
reach a complete understanding of his subject. From 
each and every detail one is driven to consider the whole ; 
the only thing that matters is that one go to work in the 
right way, with strength, intelligence, and avidity. Let 
one choose several different points of departure, working 
through from each of them to the whole, and one will 
grasp the whole all the more surely, and comprehend 
the wealth of detail all the more fully. Accordingly, by 
sinking deep into the particular, one most easily avoids 
the danger of becoming narrow, for, in consequence of 



METHOD IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE 5 1 

the interrelation of disciplines, investigation in any par- 
ticular field forces the student into many others. On the 
other hand, if one from the outset strives only for en- 
cyclopaedic many-sidedness, gathering what is most gen- 
eral in all departments, the habit is formed of rapidly 
passing from one thing to another, and learning nothing 
from the bottom up. 

The great philologists of Holland prescribe a chrono- 
logical study of all antiquity, in such fashion as to jour^ 
ney through it as if on a country road, making so many 
miles a day — a fashion of traveling that is not very 
instructive. This linear procedure does not take one to 
the heart of things ; and in point of fact the Dutch have 
been superficial in collecting their materials. The only 
correct method is the cyclic, where one refers every-' 
thing back to a central point, and from this crosses in 
all directions to the periphery. In this way the faculty 
is developed of seizing whatever one does seize upon, 
with vigor and in earnest ; the judgment is exercised to 
better advantage, because one pauses longer on the indi- 
vidual obj ect ; and more talent is developed than by that 
other, general studv, through which, on the contrary, there 
are engendered the mere opinion of knowledge and a 
fatal facility. 

But though encvclopaedia and methodology are abso- 
lutely distinct, it is nevertheless very desirable to unite 
them ; for if we have praised the method of intensive 
study, it is by no means in the sense that one could 
merely choose the better alternative, and not concern 
oneself with the other. The result of that would indeed 
be a detestable one-sidedness, a quality which must be 



52 METHODS AND AIMS 

driven out in the early stages ; for the habit is too easily 
formed, and out of it comes a self-exaltation that leads 
every one to consider his own subject of the utmost im- 
portance, and everything else of no value. Accordingly, 
one must make use of the general survey derived from 
the encyclopaedia as a corrective for intense specialization, 
acquiring the broad outlook in connection with special 
study, and beside it. To this end the encyclopaedia must 
itself furnish a methodical procedure. 1 

V. METHODS AND AIMS IN THE STUDY OF 
LITERATURE: OPINIONS FROM TWO POETS 

In the study of literature, as in all other study, the 
fundamental processes are two — observation and com- 
parison. The need of observation in the study of poetry 
may be inferred from the utterances of Wordsworth on 
his habit of production : 

' I have at all times endeavored to look steadily at my 
subject ; consequently, there is, I hope, in these poems 
little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed 
in language fitted to their respective importance. Some- 
thing must have been gained by this practice, as it is 
friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, 
good sense.' 2 

Again, in censuring certain literature of an inferior 
sort, Wordsworth declares : 

'The poetry of the period intervening between the 
publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seasons . . . 

1 Boeckh, Encyclopadie, pp. 46-48. 

2 Nowell Smith, Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, p. 18. 



METHOD IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE 53 

scarcely presents a familiar [image] from which it can 
be inferred that the eye of the poet had been steadily 
fixed upon his subject. ... A blind man, in the habit 
of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped 
from the lips of those around him, might easily depict 
these appearances with more truth.' x 

If the eye of the poet must be steadily fixed upon his 
subject, the eye of the student must be steadily fixed 
upon the form of the poem as a whole, then upon each 
detail of it, and again upon the synthesis of all the 
parts. His first duty is to see the details and the whole 
precisely as they are ; in other words, his first duty is 
exact observation. 

Next, he must compare : 

'At school [Christ's Hospital],' says Coleridge, 'I 
enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, 
though at the same time a very severe, master [the 
Reverend James Bowyer]. He early molded my taste 
to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer 
and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. 
He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such ex- 
tracts as I then read) Terence, and, above all, the chaster 
poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of 
the so-called silver and brazen ages, but with even 
those of the Augustan era ; and on grounds of plain 
sense and universal logic to see and assert the superi- 
ority of the former in the truth and nativeness both of 
their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we 
were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us read 
Shakespeare and Milton as lessons ; and they were the 

1 Nowell Smith, Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, p. 185. 



54 METHODS AND AIMS 

lessons, too, which required most time and trouble to 
bring tip, so as to escape his censure. I learned from 
him that poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seem- 
ingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, 
as severe as that of science ; and more difficult, because 
more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, 
and more fugitive, causes. In the truly great poets, he 
would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for 
every word, but for the position of every word.' 1 

In addition to perfect observation, and strict com- 
parison, the student must cultivate the habit of illus- 
trating every general statement he makes, by one or 
more specific examples. In the discussion of literature, 
this involves some familiarity with a number of the best 
models. Observation, comparison, and specific illustra- 
tion are the means through which one may ultimately 
arrive at certitude of literary judgment. Such certitude, 
however, is ordinarily a matter of slow attainment. On 
this head, listen to Wordsworth : 

'An accurate taste in poetry, and in all the other arts, 
... is an acquired talent, which can only be produced by 

1 Biographia Literaria (ed. Shawcross) I. 4. Compare Professor 
Gildersleeve on Pindar (Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature 
20.11490): 'Pindar's noble compounds and his bold metaphors give 
splendor and vitality to his style ; his narrative has a swift and strong 
movement; and his moral lessons are couched in words of oracular 
impressiveness. All this needs no demonstration ; and so far as details 
go, Pindar appeals to every lover of poetry. 

' And yet, as he himself has said, his song needs interpreters. His 
transitions are bold, and it is hard to follow his flight. Hence he has 
been set down as lawless ; and modern " Pindarists " have considered 
themselves free from the laws of consecutive thought and the shackles 
of metrical symmetry. But whatever the freedom of Pindar's thought, 
his odes are built on the strictest principles of metrical form ; strophe 



METHOD IN THE STUDY OE LITERATURE 5 5 

severe thought, and a long continued intercourse with the 
best models of composition. This is mentioned, not with 
so ridiculous a purpose as to prevent the most inexperi- 
enced reader from judging for himself, but merely to 
temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest that if 
poetry be a subject on which much time has not been 
bestowed, the judgment may be erroneous, and that in 
many cases it necessarily will be so.' 1 

So much for method. What, now, is the aim of lit- 
erary studv ? Since literature is a liberal art, its function 
must be in some way connected with liberty ; and since 
the study of literature belongs among the humanities, it 
must, if properly pursued, tend to make the student more 
humane ; that is, more thoughtful, more reverent, and 
more fearless — more wise, sympathetic, and just. As 
a liberal art, poetry helps to free us from the slavery of 
fear ; as a humane art, it disentangles us from the bestial 
part of our natures, and renders us more like the best 
and happiest, the most typical, men. The destiny of his 
poems, declares Wordsworth, is ' to console the afflicted ; 
to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy hap- 
pier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age 
to see, to think and feel, and, therefore, to become more 
actively and securely virtuous.' 2 Or, what amounts to the 
same thing, the end of his poetry, as of all good poetry, 
is to arouse, and make lasting, a pleasure that is not 

is answered by antistrophe. epode responds to epode. bar to bar. The 
more one studies the metres, the more one marvels at the delicate and 
precise workmanship. But when one turns to the thought, the story, 
then the symmetry becomes less evident — and yet it is there.' 

1 Wordsworth 's Literary Criticism, pp. 2, 39. 

2 Ibid., p. 48. 



$6 METHODS AND AIMS 

servile, that only a free and humane, or civilized, man 
can enjoy. Thus he writes to a friend : * It is plain from 
your letter that the pleasure which I have given you 
has not been blind or .unthinking ; you have studied the 
poems, and prove that you have entered into the spirit 
of them. They have not given you a cheap or vulgar 
pleasure. . . . You have given me praise for having 
reflected faithfully in my poems the feelings of human 
nature. I would fain hope that I have done so. But a 
great poet ought to do more than this ; he ought, to 
a certain degree, to rectify men's feelings, to give them 
new compositions of feeling, to render their feelings 
more sane, pure, and permanent, in short, more conso- 
nant to nature — that is, to eternal nature, and the great 
moving spirit of things.' x 

1 Wordsworth 's Literary Criticism, pp. 3, 7. Extract No. V, by Lane 
Cooper, is taken from the pamphlet mentioned above in the Preface. 



Ill 

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF 

WORDSWORTH ON THE STUDY 

AND PRACTICE OF POETRY 

I. WORDSWORTH TO R. P. GILLIES 

If you write more blank verse, pray pay particular 
attention to your versification, especially as to the pauses 
on the first, second, third, eighth, and ninth syllables. 
These pauses should never be introduced for convenience, 
and not often for the sake of variety merely, but for some 
especial effect of harmony or emphasis. 1 

II. WORDSWORTH TO WILLIAM ROWAN 
HAMILTON 

You will have no pain to suffer from my sincerity. 
With a safe conscience I can assure you that, in my judg- 
ment, your verses are animated with true poetic spirit, as 
they are evidently the product of strong feeling. The 
sixth and seventh stanzas affected me much, even to the 
dimming of my eye, and faltering of my voice while I 
was reading them aloud. . . . You will not, I am sure, 

1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family (ed. Knight) 2. 94. 

57 



58 METHODS AND AIMS 

be hurt when I tell you that the workmanship is not 
what it ought to be : 

Some touch of human sympathy find way, 

And whisper that while Truth's and Science' ray 

With such serene effulgence o'er thee shone. 

Sympathy might whisper, but a touch of sympathy 
could not. 'Truth's and Science' ray,' for the ray of 
Truth and Science, is not only extremely harsh, but a 
' ray shone ' is, if not absolutely a pleonasm, a great awk- 
wardness ; a ray may be said to ' fall ' or ' shoot ' ; and a 
sun, or a moon, or a candle to ' shine,' but not a ray. . . . 
If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, I will beg per- 
mission to dissect these verses, or any other you may be 
inclined to show me ; but I am certain that . . . your own 
high powers of mind will lead you to the main conclu- 
sions ; you will be brought to acknowledge that the logi- 
cal faculty has infinitely more to do with poetry than the 
young and the inexperienced, whether writer or critic, 
ever dreams of. Indeed, as the materials upon which 
that faculty is exercised in poetry are so subtle, so plastic, 
so complex, the application of it requires an adroitness 
which can proceed from nothing but practice ; a discern- 
ment which emotion is so far from bestowing that at first 
it is ever in the way of it. . . . 

But shall despondence therefore blench my brow, 
Or pining sorrow sickly ardor o'er. 

These are two of the worst lines in mere expression. 
'Blench' is perhaps miswritten for 'blanch'; if not, I 
don't understand the word. Blench signifies to flinch. 
If ' blanch ' be the word, the next ought to be ' hair' 



LETTERS OF WORDSWORTH 59 

You can't here use brow for the hair upon it, because 
a white brow or forehead is a beautiful characteristic of 
youth. ' Sickly ardor o'er ' was at first reading to me 
unintelligible. I took ' sickly ' to be an adjective joined 
with ; ardor,' whereas you mean it as a portion of a verb, 
from Shakespeare — 'Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
thought.' But the separation of the parts, or decompo- 
sition of the word, as here done, is not to be endured. 1 

III. WORDSWORTH TO WILLIAM ROWAN 

HAMILTON 

The poem you were so kind as to inclose gave me 
much pleasure, nor was it the less interesting for being 
composed upon a subject you had touched before. The 
style in this latter is more correct, and the versification 
more musical. Where there is so much of sincerity of 
feeling, in a matter so dignified as the renunciation of 
Poetry for Science, one feels that an apology is necessary 
for verbal criticism. I will therefore content myself with 
observing that joying for joy, or joyancc, is not to my 
taste ; indeed, I object to such liberties upon principle. 
We should soon have no language at all if the un- 
scrupulous coinage of the present day were allowed to 
pass, and become a precedent for the future. One of 
the first duties of a writer is to ask himself whether 
his thought, feeling, or image cannot be expressed by 
existing words or phrases, before he goes about creating 
new terms, even when they are justified by the analogies 
of the language. . . . 

1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family 2. 312-313. 



60 METHODS AND AIMS 

Your sister must practise her mind in severer logic ; 
for example, the first words of the first poem : ' Thou 
most companionless.' . In strict logic, being companion- 
less is a positive condition, not admitting of more or 
less, though in poetic feeling it is true that the sense of 
it is deeper as to one object than to another ; and the 
day moon is an object eminently calculated for impressing 
certain minds with that feeling. Therefore the expression 
is not faulty in itself absolutely, but faulty in its position, 
coming without preparation, and therefore causing a shock 
between the common sense of the words and the impas- 
sioned imagination of the speaker. This may appear to you 
frigid criticism, but, depend upon it, no writings will live 
in which these rules are disregarded. In the next line : 

Walking the blue but foreign fields of day ; 

the meaning here is, walking blue fields which, though 
common to see in our observation by night, are not so by 
day, even to accurate observers. Here, too, the thought 
is just ; but again there is an abruptness ; the distinction 
is too nice, or refined, for the second line of a poem. 

' Weariness of that gold sphere.' Silver is frequently 
used as an adjective by our poets ; gold, as I should sup- 
pose, very rarely, unless it may be in dramatic poetry, 
where the same delicacies are not indispensable. * Gold 
watch,' ' gold bracelet,' etc., are shop language. l Gold 
sphere ' is harsh in sound, particularly at the close of a 
line. l Faint, as if weary of my golden sphere,' would 
please me better. ' Greets thy rays' You do not greet 
the ray by daylight ; you greet the moon ; there is no 
ray. ' Daring flight ' is wrong ; the moon, under no 



LETTERS OF WORDSWORTH 61 

mythology that I am acquainted with, is represented with 
wings ; and though on a stormy night, when clouds are 
driving rapidly along, the word might be applied to her 
apparent motion, it is not so here. Therefore ' flight ' is 
here used for unusual or unexpected ascent, a sense, in 
my judgment, that cannot be admitted. The slow motion 
by which this ascent is gained is at variance with the 
word. The rest of this stanza is very pleasing, with the 
exception of one word — ' thy nature's breast! Say ' pro- 
fane thy nature ' ; how much simpler and better ! ' Breast' 
is a sacrifice to rhyme, and is harsh in expression. We 
have had the brow and the eye of the moon before, both 
allowable ; but what have we reserved for human beings, 
if their features and organs, etc., are to be lavished on 
objects without feeling and intelligence ? You will, per- 
haps, think this observation comes with an ill grace from 
one who is aware that he has tempted many of his ad- 
mirers into abuses of this kind ; yet, I assure you, I have 
never given way to my own feelings in personifying natural 
objects, or investing them with sensation, without bringing 
all that I have said to a rigorous after-test of good sense, as 
far as I was able to determine what good sense is. Your 
sister will judge, from my being so minute, that I have been 
much interested in her poetical efforts. . . . She will proba- 
bly write less in proportion as she subjects her feelings to 
logical forms, but the range of her sensibilities, so far from 
being narrowed, will extend as she improves in the habit 
of looking at things through the steady light of words ; 
and, to speak a little metaphysically, words are not a mere 
vehicle, but they are powers either to kill or to animate. 1 

1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family 2. 397 ff. 



62 METHODS AND AIMS 

IV. WORDSWORTH TO LORD LONSDALE 

As to teaching belles-lettres, languages, law, political 
economy, morals, etc., by lectures, it is absurd. Lec- 
tures may be very useful in experimental philosophy, 
geology, and natural history, or any art or science capa- 
ble of illustration by experiments, operations, and speci- 
mens ; but in other departments of knowledge they are, 
in most cases, worse than superfluous. Of course I do 
not include in the above censure college lectures, as 
they are called, when the business consists not of ha- 
ranguing the pupils, but in ascertaining the progress 
they have made. 1 

V. WORDSWORTH TO WILLIAM ROWAN 

HAMILTON 

Again and again I must repeat that the composition of 
verse is infinitely more of an art than men are prepared 
to believe, and absolute success in it depends upon in- 
numerable minutiae. . . . Milton [speaks] of pouring 'easy' 
his c unpremeditated verse.' It would be harsh, untrue, 
and odious to say there is anything like cant in this ; but 
it is not true to the letter, and tends to mislead. I could 
point out to you five hundred passages in Milton upon 
which labor has been bestowed, and twice five hundred 
more to which additional labor would have been service- 
able ; not that I regret the absence of such labor, because 
no poem contains more proof of skill acquired by practice 
[than Paradise Lost]. 2 

1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family 2. 259-260. 2 Ibid. 2. 470. 



IV 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRACTICE 
OF GREAT WRITERS IN COMPOSING 

I. PROFESSOR LOCKWOOD ON MILTON'S 
CORRECTIONS OF THE MINOR POEMS 

Masson, in his * General Introduction to the Minor 
Poems,' speaks of ' Milton's habits of composition, and 
the critical fastidiousness with which, in each revision of 
his poems, he sought improvements in words or in sound.' 
Again he says : ' Milton erased and changed so much in 
the act of writing that it is impossible to give an adequate 
idea of his habits in this respect except by actual repro- 
duction of the Cambridge manuscript in facsimile.' In 
1899 this much desired reproduction was made, at the 
request of the Council of Trinity College, and under 
the excellent supervision of Mr. William Aldis Wright. 
The pages of this facsimile are of great value, because 
they reveal to us something of Milton's workshop, some- 
thing of the struggles he had in molding this often stub- 
born English language to the expression of his thought 
and the needs of his verse. 

Is it true that he was fastidious, and that he changed 
much ? If so, what was he seeking by these changes — 
clearness of thought, beauty of expression, or the flowing 
music of his verse ? What were his habits of correction ; 

63 



64 METHODS AND AIMS 

was the idea as he first conceived it almost perfect, need- 
ing only the change of a word here and there ; or was 
the conception, as it first came to him, merely in the 
rough, demanding one or more rewritings before it satis- 
fied his taste ? Mr. Bradley says : ' Verse may be easy 
and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, 1 and yet 
many a word in it may be changed many a time, and 
the last change be more "inspired" than the original.' 2 
Does the manuscript lead us to believe that the early 
verse was unpremeditated, as well as the later — of which 
Milton makes this assertion ; or did he rely much on these 
third and fourth inspirations ? 

Lamb greatly regretted the evil hour in which he had 
been shown these pages at Cambridge : ' How it staggered 
me to see the fine things in their ore ! interlined, cor- 
rected ! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displace- 
able at pleasure ! as if they might have been otherwise, 
and just as good ! as if inspiration were made up of parts, 
and these fluctuating, successive, indifferent ! I will never 
go into the workshop of any great artist again.' 3 How- 
ever many persons there may be who still hold Lamb's 
point of view, the student of English finds his joy in the 
poetry noway diminished, and his interest in the poet 
greatly increased, by attempting through a study of these 
manuscript lines, the most of them in Milton's own hand- 
writing, to learn at least a little of how the poet worked 
in fashioning his poetic conceptions. 



1 Paradise Lost 9. 24. 

2 A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 68. 

3 See the note to Lamb's essay, Oxford in the Vacation, quoted in 
part by Wright in his introduction to the Facsimile, 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 65 

A superficial examination of these sheets shows one 
thing clearly — that Milton was extremely careful of his 
manuscript. The margins and lines are almost always 
straight, and the words clearly written ; wherever the pen 
has been drawn through, it has been done in clean fashion, 
not to mar letters above or below the canceled words. New 
phrases, and often words, are written plainly in the mar- 
gin, frequently with a star at the new and old to indicate 
that one fits into the place of the other. Occasionally a 
pen mark connects the fresh material with that which has 
been stricken out, in order to leave no question about its 
position. An erased word, on second thought to be re- 
tained, is in almost all instances sharply underscored. 
Milton, it is true, sometimes rather overdoes this nice ex- 
actness, as when he closes Comus with ' Exit,' ' the end,' 
' Finis.' The writing of these poems was done at many 
and various times from 163 1 to at least 1645, yet the 
pages which Milton himself wrote differ little in form or 
in scrupulous care. 

Another impression we gain from a glance at these 
written sheets is that there is a good deal of revision ; 
there are but two pages wholly free from erasures or in- 
sertions, and these two contain only one sonnet each. 
There are thirty-nine folio pages filled, or partly filled, 
with poetry, and of these fully four have been altogether 
crossed out and rewritten, or entirely discarded. It is true 
that many of the lines in these sections through which he 
has drawn his condemning pen are incorporated in the 
newly composed parts, yet they are in a new order or set- 
ting, and bring to the ear and mind a different thought. 
There is, again, no very large number of consecutive 



66 METHODS AND AIMS 

uncorrected lines. » Sonnet n, 1 that on his twenty-third 
birthday, is free from any changes, but that was doubtless 
a copy of the first draft, which may have been repeatedly 
altered. The little poem On Time, and Sonnets viii and 
xxiii, stand just as first written ; the verses Upon the Cir- 
cumcision — excluding the marginal rewriting of the last 
two lines, — and Sonnets xv and xxi, have corrections 
only in spelling. However, these sonnets, except No. n, 
are all in the hand of an amanuensis ; and where another 
used the pen, the revisions are proportionally fewer — 
probably because the poet elaborated the theme more 
carefully before repeating it to another than when he 
could himself make -experiments on paper. With these 
few exceptions, every page shows the labor Milton spent 
in making the language express exactly the shade of 
meaning he had in mind. 

Although a cursory glance at the pages seems to tell 
that the poet has altered much, yet when we come to 
examine them in detail, we find that of the 1813 lines 
fully three-fourths are without any corrections at all ; and, 
moreover, to this total of first-hand lines, he has added as 
afterthought only 53. He has discarded entirely but 56, 
and has rewritten of whole lines barely 162. The era- 
sures and substitutions are so scattered throughout the 
pages, and are so much more apparent to the eye than 
the untouched lines, that the judgment at a glance is easily 
accounted for. So large a number of lines retained just as 
set down on paper indicates, I think, not that he changed 
much, but that he altered relatively little. However, I 

1 The numbering of the Sonnets is that of the Globe Edition of 
Milton. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 67 

have r.:: : 17373733 his faiilky 3777 173. : if iiher piers. 
371 S7C7 3 : 17:737:5:7 7:177: reve7se ::::i C1737537. 

Mil:::: 735 77333 :he 773a:es: 777:333 c: 3737775 77 

3373535 77 C 37733737 175 if 77 13 7 33 3 35! 5 1313- 

77:35 73 5315373:35 173 33" 33 fir 73 1. Cr 333 33353.. ir 73 

3737 77c :335 3 :f 3 -. erb, or varies the constniC7 7 7 :: 

3337773. 73 1733335 33333 1 13 '"3 3 1333 373 75 : 

1 whose sway' to 'beside the sway'; 'it finds' to *is 
found ' ; " hid in ' to 'or with.' 

Next in nurr:h-e7 373 the 3737335 in individual words; 

:_:: 333:3 3:353 33 735 733 3:73: 3:33 333 I7f 7. 3-337 

3:3 3737 333 33 313 3 7:3 377: 73 13313 3 775 33- 

3:337 7313 fre: 33773 35 is 53331 by 3:3 33 337 

he has substituted other verbs in only about half as many 

37532733-5 35 73 735 1337 1333 31133 3 5333 737376 31375 

or words of description. There are two of these corrected 

verbs 3-7337 53133 1353 11:51 3 33:35 :~ 313333 3311 all 
37ise 3733 3-77I3 3333 333 5733k £73757 3737 3733333 
I3 Cmkus 437 he seis 3:3 hrs: shall." 33:3 :he7 5:1:5:1- 
tutes ' wilL' In the last two 7735 1 f Circumcision the same 
7373 3737s: fir sirr.e reasia he 735 333:31: :hese lines 

3 53 33 3 77773 77 173 7737373. 377 3 15 77 3713 531 133 
3:33713:1 •.-.-3333 333 33 333 735: shall/ 373 3737 ' Trill.' 

He evidently was not unconsciias in his precise 353 1: 
these two difficult words. Those perplexing small words 

73 377 1377733333 "hill: CIS! 3171 'if 35 51 77717 1333 333- 

ciling gave Milton singularity little trouble; he changes 

53333313 33371373 137: 7173 33:e5. 73331513307$ 31777 313- 

junctions ten, the article two, and the adverb five times. 

Milton seldom slipped into the mechanical fault of 

writing a word twice — of repeating words; but his 



68 METHODS AND AIMS 

absent-mindedness is sometimes clearly in evidence. He 
writes, Comics 288 : 'No less then then if I should my 
brothers lose ' ; and 483 : ' Either either some one.' There 
is, however, usually a better reason for any repetitions 
which occur. Sometimes he writes down the word, and 
then his ear tells him that it belongs in the next line, so 
he repeats it in its proper position, as 'of,' Arcades 89; 
or he carries the word over from the end of one line to 
the beginning of the next, as 'heare,' Arcades 72. Again, 
he thinks to change a word, and erases it ; then decides 
to retain the same word, and rewrites it, as 'eye,' Comus 
329. Twice the repetition is plainly due to the fact that 
in the middle of the line he determines on a different 
order of words — Arcades 57, 'awakes the leaves slum- 
bering leaves.' But most frequently the word is rewritten 
because the first spelling is not correct ; yet there are 
hardly more than a dozen such instances. 

Milton's purpose in revising his poems, if intention 
may be judged by result, was to render the thought clear, 
logical, and vivid. I believe three-fourths of the correc- 
tions attain this end. He revised less to make a well- 
sounding line, a more picturesque or imaginative verse, 
than a verse which expressed a coherent and convincing 
thought. In doing this there appear to have been certain 
habits which he recognized as a part of his style, and 
which he sought to correct. For example, in recasting 
he frequently substitutes a less technical word or phrase, 
as if he himself saw the possible danger to his poetry 
from his learning. In Solemn Music 2 ' Mixe your 
choise chords ' is changed to ' wed your divine sounds, ' 
and in a line later entirely omitted, ' chromatik jarres ' is 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 69 

erased for ' ill sounding ' ; Comus 21,' the rule and title ' 
becomes ' imperial rule ' ; in 310 ' steerage of — ' guess 
of ; in 134' polisht ' — ' cloudie ' ; in 242 ' hold a coun- 
terpoint ' — ' give resounding grace.' Again, he seeks a 
simpler expression, one savoring less of bombast ; which 
trick of style he loved in his extreme youth, as is clearly 
revealed in the translation of the Psalms, and which he 
doubtless fell into from much reading of the Elizabethans. 
In Comus the Lady rapturously exclaims — following line 
215: ' while I see yee this dusky hollow is a paradise 
and heaven gates ore my head.' The poet has certainly 
felt the incongruity of such sentiments, and finally allows 
her to say only : ' 1 see yee visibly.' At line 696, as first 
written, she addresses Comus : ' O my simplicity what 
sights are these ? what dark disguises and soothing lies, 
hence with thy treacherous kindnesse thou man of lies 
and falsehood, if thou give it me I throw it on the 
ground.' The Brothers are on occasion bombastic enough, 
but the case against them would be worse if the following 
lines had been allowed to remain — after line 357: 'so 
fares as did forsaken Proserpine when the big wallowing 
flakes of pitchie clowds and darkness wound her in.' 
Again, the Elder Brother first closed his speech at line 383 
with this mouth-filling phrase : * walks in black vapours, 
though the noontyde brand blaze in the summer solstice.' 
Usually, however, it is reasonably clear that Milton is 
revising for the direct purpose of rendering the thought 
more logical or more vivid. In Arcades 8-12 'Fame' 
was, in the first draft, the subject of all the lines ; the 
change to ' we ' gives a clearer sense of the relation of 
the two parties in the contention. Solemn Music 10 has 



;o METHODS AND AIMS 

first 'tripled,' but the substituted 'burning' unifies the 
line by carrying out the idea of 'bright.' In 14 'bloom- 
ing palms ' is changed to ' victorious palms,' thus giving 
a thought in accord with the context. In Comus 193 
'youthly' comes less fittingly from the mouth of the 
young girl than ' wandering.' That fine line, 208, stands, 
as first written down : ' and airy tongues that lure night 
wanderers ' ; where, of course, the whole harmony of the 
passage is lost by intruding a definite statement amid 
the delicate suggestiveness of the lines immediately pre- 
ceding and following. In Comus 349 the words are 
'sad,' then 'lone,' and 'finally 'close'; neither one of 
the first two seems to come logically from the lips of 
young men in the act of finding a person to whom the 
wood might reasonably appear 'sad' or 'lone.' In 355 
we read : ' she leans her thoughtful head musing at our 
unkindnesse ' ; which gives exactly the opposite impression 
of the line as revised. Comus 713 has first ' cramming ' 
instead of 'thronging,' and this impossible thought is 
followed by the still more impossible idea, expressed in 
a fortunately erased line : ' the fields with cattle and the 
aire with fowle.' Where whole verses are rewritten in the 
margin, this rewriting is again almost always to render 
the thought clearer. Comus 175 is added to offer a 
reason for 176; 254 and 255 give concreteness and 
vividness to a picture that would otherwise lack a definite 
cause and position; line 456 is inserted to present the 
negative action of the angels, which prepares for the posi- 
tive action in the verses that follow. So the list might be 
greatly increased ; and in each case the evident search on 
the part of the poet was for a strong, unified thought. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 71 

It is perhaps a surprise to find how rarely Milton has 
to work solely for poetic suggestiveness — how seldom he 
feels it necessary to substitute for words thin in imagin- 
ative content those rich in suggestion. This is, however, 
sometimes plainly his intention, as in Comus 117, where 
he replaces ' yellow ' with ' tawny ' ; or in 181, where 
' blind alleys of this arched wood ' becomes ' blind mazes 
of this tangled wood ' ; or in 498, where ' leapt ore the 
penne ' is changed to ' slipt from the fold.' In Comus 
821 the plain prose of 'there is another way' is slightly 
improved into ' some other meanes I have.' The sub- 
stitution of ' pearled ' for ' white ' in 834 alters the whole 
character of the picture, making it far more appealing 
to the imagination. The added line, 442, ' faire silver- 
shafted Queen for ever chast,' has no other purpose than 
that of imaginative suggestion. 

In less than one-fourth of the instances of correction 
the poet's desire for a smoother line, a verse more pleas- 
ing to the ear, appears to have dictated the choice of 
words or phrases. One has only to take a present-day 
text and read the following lines, making the indicated 
substitutions, to be sure that this was his purpose. Arca- 
des 13, read 'her hide' for 'conceal'; 18, 'seated' for 
' sitting ' ; 50, ' leaves ' for ' boughs ' ; Comics 58, ' nam'd 
him Comus ' for ' him Comus named ' ; 5 76, ' solitarie 
sweet retire ' for ' sweet retired solitude.' This purpose 
is perhaps more clearly seen in certain whole lines. He 
writes, Solemn Music 1 1 : ' high lifted loud archangel 
trumpets blow ' ; and gains, not thought but sound, by re- 
writing: ' their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.' Again, 
the weak line at 20, ' drown 'd natures chime and with 



7* - METHODS AND AIMS 

tumultuous din,' becomes the very strong onomatopoeic 
verse : ' jarred against natures chime and with harsh din.' 
In a few cases, as Comus 376, the chief reason for the 
change is, it seems, to avoid too much alliteration. 

In a small number of lines he has revised for the sake 
of metre only, but the smallness of the number shows 
how true was Milton's ear, how attuned to the needs of 
his verse. In Comus 257 'would weepe ' is changed to 
1 wept,' evidently to get rid of an extra syllable ; in 73 
'before' is blotted after 'as,' and in 304 'out' after 
'then,' for the same reason. 

The question of Milton's dependence on third, or 
fourth, or later, inspirations is interesting, because the 
number of cases in which he has sought again and again 
for the right word or phrase is only about forty, and be- 
cause in several of these instances he has finally returned 
to the word with which he began. For example, the re- 
writings stand, Solemn Music 20 : ' ever-endlesse light,' 
'ever-glorious,' ' uneclipsed,' 'where day dwells without 
night,' 'in endlesse morn of light,' 'in cloudlesse birth 
of light,' ' in never parting light.' In the final recast he 
chooses the fifth form, which combines the two ideas 
he is seeking — duration and brightness. In Comus 448 
he searches for an adjective to be applied to Minerva : 
'eternal,' ' unvanquisht,' ' unconquer'd.' Line 545 shows 
his difficulty in determining just how the honeysuckle 
shall best be characterized : ' suckling,' ' blowing,' ' flaunt- 
ing,' 'blowing,' 'flaunting.' In 962 he has much ado to 
make the words fit : 'of speedier toeing,' ' of nimbler 
toeing,' ' of lighter toeing '; and finally in ' of lighter toes ' 
he wins the right concrete phrase. In 556 — ' soft,' 'still,' 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 73 

'soft,' 'sweet,' 'soft' — he returns to 'soft,' probably think- 
ing it was the best he could do. He was not, then, as a 
recent writer has well-nigh made him, one of the Nine, 
but he had sometimes to struggle with words as lesser 
men have had to do. 

What are the poems, if we may judge by the amount of 
revision shown in the manuscript, which caused him most 
labor? Arcades was written with much ease — at least 
with few corrections. At a Solemn Music was the result 
of hours of work and many rewritings ; it is entirely 
rewritten three times — the last ten lines four times ; 
and the first two versions have many changes. Comtis 
shows, I believe, more uniform care for the right choice 
of words than any other poem. After the first four lines 
he wisely blots fifteen lines, mostly about gardens, roses, 
and dragons in the land where the Spirit has lived. 
They are diffuse, and mar the quiet strength of the 
opening verses. The weak line at 133 he has sought to 
remodel, but has not much improved it : ' and makes a 
blot of nature and throws a blot ' ; then, in the margin, 
the line as it is now in the text. Comtis 350-358 has 
been much rewritten ; even as it is at present, Milton 
was dissatisfied with it, and pasted on the margin of the 
next sheet a new form, but this attached slip has unfor- 
tunately been lost. Lines 672-705, also the Lady's 
speech at 663, originally stood after 755 ; they have 
been crossed, and rewritten on a separate slip, with the 
note that they are to be inserted after ' in primrose 
season.' Lines 807-810 as first written were: 'come 
y' are too morall this is meere morall stuffe the very 
lees and settlings of a melancholy blood.' In this passage 



74 METHODS AND AIMS 

the change seems to me for the worse, certainly more tech- 
nical. As is sometimes the case, he might better have kept 
his first inspiration. He has added lines 869-874, which 
we could ill spare from this beautiful invocation. The last 
song of the Spirit has been wholly rewritten, three lines 
being crossed, and fifteen added ; those added include 
the verses relating to Spring and the Graces, the com- 
pletion of the picture of Adonis, and the story of Cupid. 
Each of these passages fills up and rounds out the pic- 
ture which it closes ; the song read without them fails 
to give us as a whole the feeling of sumptuousness it 
was certainly intended to give. 

Lycidas came to Milton's imagination, or at least to 
paper, in a very perfect form. He writes the first four- 
teen lines, and then tries the flower passage, which 
was evidently haunting his thought. He sets it down 
once, crosses it all out, and begins over again. Line 
146 was nearer inspiration as first written: 'the muske 
rose and the garish columbine ' ; but perhaps it did not 
express his feeling for the flower, or it did not sound 
appropriate to have so gaudy a flower about the dead. 
Ruskin calls 148 'mixed fancy and imagination'; the 
first version, ' every bud that sorrows liverie weares,' 
is also mixed, but perhaps less objectionable than the 
form we are familiar with. After the flower passage is 
to his mind, he takes a fresh sheet, and, commencing 
the poem once more, writes to the end with very little 
recasting, except at 58-62, which he thrice revises. 
Save for these two difficult parts, Milton seems to 
have written Lycidas with little premeditation, and hence 
with ease. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 75 

The Sonnets, fifteen in number, including On the New 
Forcers of Conscience (the only ones not in this manu- 
script are i, xvm, xix, xx), are fairly free from correc- 
tions, except in the case of single words, and these not 
numerous. Three only have been revised to any extent. 
The thirteenth, to Lawes, Milton seems to have been so 
particular about, so careful to have of the right shade of 
dignity, that he has refined away much of the vividness 
of phrase ; there is a strength and sureness in the first 
draft that the second lacks. For example, line 4, ' mis- 
joining ' is better than ' committing ' ; line 6, f and gives 
thee praise above the pipe of Pan,' is more easily grasped 
by the imagination than the line as we have it, about Envy. 
Again, lines 1 2 and 1 3 are swifter as first written : ' by 
the Tuscan's leav, shall set thee higher then old Casella 
whom Dante woo'd to sing.' He appears to have had a 
like thought about Sonnet xiv, to Mrs. Thomson ; it must 
be stately, large-sounding ; and the rewriting has had the 
similar result of making the sonnet less vigorous. The 
revision of Sonnet xi is not so great in the number of 
changes made, but it has almost as marked an effect upon 
the whole ; here, with quite a different subject and doubt- 
less for a very different reason, he has really accomplished 
much the same thing as in working over the other two — 
taken some of the strength and life out of it. It began : ' I 
writ a book ' ; and lines 3 and 4 read : * it went off well 
about the town a while, numbering good wits ; but now is 
seldom poured on.' The change to the third person and pas- 
sive voice, which he made in revising, has not improved it. 

It is true, indeed, that in a few cases Milton's second 
idea is less poetic than the first, but in most instances the 



76 * METHODS AND AIMS 

later thought is by far the more inspired, and the work 
of revision has been wisely expended. The manuscript 
shows, moreover, that, although he was a poet who gen- 
erally worked with a good deal of ease, and changed 
comparatively little, yet he was also an untiring critic of 
his own poems ; and that many words and phrases, as 
well as occasional long passages, cost him much labor in 
bringing the thought to the fulfilment of expression. 1 

II. HORACE 

Nor would the land we love be now more strong 

In warrior's prowess than in poet's song, 

Did not her bards with one consent decline 

The tedious task, to alter and refine. 

Dear Pisos ! as you prize old Numa's blood, 

Set down that work, and that alone, as good, 

Which, blurred and blotted, checked and counterchecked, 

Has stood all tests, and issued forth correct. 2 

III. BEN JONSON ON SHAKESPEARE 

I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an 
honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever 
he penn'd) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath 
beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they 
thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity 
this, but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance 
to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. 
And to justifie mine owne candor (for I lov'd the man, 

1 Laura E. Lockwood, in Modern Language Notes 25. 201-205. 

2 Horace, Ars Poetica (tr. Conington) 289-294. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 77 

and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as 
much as any). Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an 
open, and free nature ; had an excellent Phantsie ; brave 
notions, and gentle expressions : wherein hee flowed with 
that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should 
be stop'd. f Sztfflaminandus erat y ' as Augustus said of 
Haterius. His wit was in his owne power ; would the 
rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into 
those things, could not escape laughter ; as when he said 
in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him : ' Caesar, 
thou dost me wrong.' Hee reply ed, ' Caesar did never 
wrong, but with just cause ' ; and such like, which were 
ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. 
There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be 
pardoned. 1 

IV. BEN JONSON ON STYLE 

For a man to write well, there are required three 
Necessaries : To reade the best Authors, observe the best 
Speakers, and much exercise of his owne style. In style 
to consider what ought to be written, and after what 
manner. Hee must first thinke, and excogitate his mat- 
ter ; then choose his words, and examine the weight of 
either. Then take care in placing and ranking both mat- 
ter and words, that the composition be comely ; and to 
doe this with diligence, and often. No matter how slow 
the style be at first, so it be labour'd and accurate ; seeke 
the best, and be not glad of the froward conceipts, or 
first words that offer themselves to us, but judge of what 
wee invent, and order what wee approve. Repeat often 

1 Ben Jonson, Discoveries (ed. Castelain), pp. 35, 36. 



7% ' METHODS AND AIMS 

what wee have formerly written ; which, beside that it 
helpes the consequence and makes the juncture better, it 
quickens the heate of imagination, that often cooles in the 
time of setting downe, and gives it new strength, as if it 
grew lustier by the going back. As we see in the conten- 
tion of leaping, they jumpe farthest that fetch their race 
largest ; or, as in throwing a Dart or Javelin, wee force 
back our armes to make our loose the stronger. Yet, if 
we have a faire gale of wind, I forbid not the steering out 
of our sayle, so the favour of the gale deceive us not. 
For all that wee invent doth please us in the conception 
or birth — else we would never set it downe. But the 
safest is to returne to our Judgement, and handle over 
againe those things, the easinesse of which might make 
them justly suspected. So did the best Writers in their 
beginnings ; they impos'd upon themselves care and in- 
dustry ; they did nothing rashly. They obtain'd first to 
write well, and then custome made it easie and a habit. 
By little and little, their matter shew'd itself to 'hem 
more plentifully ; their words answer'd, their composition 
followed ; and all, as in a well-order'd family, presented 
itself in the place. So that the sum of all is : Ready 
writing makes not good writing ; but good writing brings 
on ready writing. Yet, when wee thinke we have got the 
faculty, it is even then good to resist it — as to give a 
Horse a check sometimes with (a) bit, which doth not 
so much stop his course as stirre his mettle. Againe, 
[whither] a mans Genius is best able to reach, thither it 
should more and more contend, lift, and dilate it selfe ; 
as men of low stature raise themselves on their toes, and 
so ofttimes get even, if not eminent. Besides, as it is fit 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING /9 

for grown and able Writers to stand of themselves and 
worke with their owne strength, to trust and endeavour 
by their owne faculties ; so it is fit for the beginner and 
learner to study others, and the best. For the mind and 
memory are more sharpely exercis'd in comprehending 
an other mans things then our owne ; and such as accustome 
themselves, and are familiar with the best Authors, shall 
ever and anon find somewhat of them in themselves, and, 
in the expression of their minds, even when they feele it 
not, be able to utter something like theirs which hath an 
Authority above their owne. 1 

V. SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Upon his mentioning that when he came to College he 
wrote his first exercise twice over, but never did so after- 
wards — Miss Adams. ' I suppose, Sir, you could not 
make them better ? ' Johnson. ' Yes, Madam, to be sure, 
I could make them better. Thought is better than no 
thought.' Miss Adams. ' Do you think, Sir, you could 
make your Ramblers better ? ' Johnson. l Certainly I 
could.' Boswell. ' I '11 lay a bet, Sir, you cannot.' 
Johnson. ' But I will, Sir, if I choose. I shall make 
the best of them you shall pick out, better.' Bos well. 
1 But you may add to them. I will not allow of that.' 
Johnson. ' Nay, Sir, there are three ways of making 
them better : putting out, adding, or correcting.' 2 

1 Ben Jonson, Discoveries (ed. Castelain), pp. 84-86. 

2 Boswell's Life of fo hns on (Oxford Edition) 2. 562. 



80 " METHODS AND AIMS 

VI. ROUSSEAU 

Two things, very opposite, unite in me, and in a man- 
ner which I cannot myself conceive. My disposition is 
extremely ardent, my passions lively and impetuous, yet 
my ideas are produced slowly, with great embarrassment 
and after much afterthought. It might be said my heart 
and understanding do not belong to the same individual. 
A sentiment takes possession of my soul with the rapidity 
of lightning, but instead of illuminating, it dazzles and 
confounds me ; I feel all, but see nothing ; I am warm, 
but stupid ; to think, I must be cool. What is astonish- 
ing, my conception is clear and penetrating, if not hurried. 
I can make excellent impromptus at leisure, but on the 
instant could never say or do anything worth notice. . . . 

This slowness of thought, joined to vivacity of feeling, 
I am not only sensible of in conversation, but even alone. 
When I write, my ideas are arranged with the utmost 
difficulty. . . . 

Thence arises the extreme difficulty I find in writing ; 
my manuscripts, blotted, scratched, and scarcely legible, 
attest the trouble they cost me ; nor is there one of them 
but I have been obliged to transcribe four or five times 
before it went to press. Never could I do anything when 
placed at a table, pen in hand ; it must be walking among 
the rocks, or in the woods. It is at night in my bed, 
during my wakeful hours, that I compose ; it may be 
judged how slowly, particularly for a man who has not 
the advantage of verbal memory, and never in his life 
could retain by heart six verses. Some of my periods I 
have turned and re-turned in my head five or six nights 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 8 1 

before they were fit to be put to paper ; — thus it is that I 
succeed better in works that require laborious attention 
than those that appear more trivial, such as letters, in 
which I could never succeed, and being obliged to write 
one is to me a serious punishment ; nor can I express my 
thoughts on the most trivial subjects without it costing 
me hours of fatigue. If I write immediately what strikes 
me, my letter is a long, confused, unconnected string of 
expressions, which, when read, can hardly be understood. 1 

VII. GILMAN ON COLERIDGE 

It has been repeated, ad nauseam, that great minds 
will not descend to the industrious accumulation of those 
acquirements best suited to fit them for independence. 
To say that Coleridge would not condescend would be a 
calumny ; — nay, when his health permitted, he would 
drudge and work more laboriously at some of the mechan- 
ical parts of literature than any man I ever knew. 2 

VIII. COLERIDGE 

[Coleridge writes] . . . The delay in copy has been 
owing to me as the writer of Chris tab el. Every line has 
been produced by me with labor pangs. 3 

1 Rousseau, Confessions, Book 3, pp. 86, 87, in the translation pub- 
lished by Glaisher. 

2 Gilman, Life of Coleridge, p. 63. 

3 Christabel (ed. E. H. Coleridge), pp. 39-40. 



82 METHODS AND AIMS 

IX. WORDSWORTH, AS SEEN BY HIS SISTER 

Monday, 25th January [1802]. . . . Wm. tired with 
composition. . . . 

On Saturday, 30th, Wm. worked at The Pedlar all the 
morning. He kept the dinner waiting till four o'clock. 
He was much tired. . . . 

Sunday, 31st. Wm. had slept very ill. He was 
tired. . . . 

Monday, February 1st. Wm. slept badly. I baked bread. 
William worked hard at The Pedlar, and tired himself. . . . 

Tuesday, 2d February. . . . William worked at The 
Pedlar. . . . 

Friday, 5th. . . . Wm. cut wood a little. Sate up late 
at The Pedlar. . . . 

Monday Morning, 8th February. . . . William worked 
at his poem. . . . 

Tuesday. Wm. had slept better. He fell to work, and 
made himself unwell. . . . We went to bed, but not till 
Wm. had tired himself. . . . 

Wednesday, 10th. ... I was writing out the poem — as 
we hoped, for a final writing. . . . We read the first part, 
and were delighted with it, but Wm. afterwards got to 
some ugly place, and went to bed tired out. . . . 

Thursday, nth. . . . Wm. sadly tired and working at 
The Pedlar. . . . 

Friday, 12th. A very fine, bright, clear, hard frost. 
Wm. working again. I recopied The Pedlar, but poor 
Wm. all the time at work. . . . 

Saturday, 13th. . . . Still at work at The Pedlar, alter- 
ing and refitting. . . . 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 83 

Tuesday, 16th. ... He was better — had altered The 
Pedlar. ... 

Wednesday [March 3]. I was so unlucky as to pro- 
pose to rewrite The Pedlar. Wm. got to work, and was 
worn to death. . . . 

Friday Morning. ... I wrote The Pedlar, and finished 
it before I went to Mrs. Simpson's to drink tea ... . 

Sunday Morning. ... I stitched up The Pedlar ; wrote 
out Ruth ; read it with the alterations . . . 

Tuesday Morning. . . . We sate by the fire in the 
evening, and read The Pedlar over. William worked a 
little, and altered it in a few places. 1 

X. DE QUINCEY 

What may certainly be said of these, or of any dreams 
or series of dreams which De Quincey ever had ready to 
insert in the Confessions, is that, on his own word, they 
were not written in a mere glow of spirits. He reminds 
the reader ' of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts 
to clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the 
world of dreams, where a single false note, a single word 
in a wrong key, ruins the whole music' We have already 
referred to the passages in which he implies, or directly 
affirms, that some smaller part of the Confessions had 
not been written hastily — had received at least ' an 
ordinary verbal correction.' De Quincey sympathizes 
with the toils of others in composition — with the exces- 
sive labor of Junius, for example ; and we know by all 
accounts how careful a workman he himself was, how 

1 Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (ed. Knight) 1. 82 ff. 



84 METHODS AND AIMS 

rarely content with his creations. The greater part of the 
Confessions, because of pecuniary stress, was hastily 
put together. Later in life, when the author came to 
revise, he bestowed measureless pains on this work, 
toiling on in spite of ' a nervous malady of very peculiar 
character.' 'Although pretty nearly dedicating myself 
to this one solitary labor, and not intermitting or relax- 
ing it for a single day, I have yet spent,' he says in 1856, 
' within a very few days, six calendar months upon the 
recast of this one small volume.' In this revision he 
changed the general narrative to a large extent, he added 
lyrical matter as well, and he slightly modified the lyrical 
matter already existing. 1 

XI. CARDINAL NEWMAN 

It is simply the fact that I have been obliged to take 
great pains with everything I have written, and I often 
write chapters over and over again, besides innumerable 
corrections and interlinear additions. ... I have heard that 
Archbishop Howley, who was an elegant writer, betrayed 
the labor by which he became so by his mode of speak- 
ing, which was most painful to hear from his hesitations 
and alterations — that is, he was correcting his composi- 
tion as he went along. 

However, I may truly say that I never have been in 
the practice since I was a boy of attempting to write well, 
or to form an elegant style. I think I have never written 
for writing' sake ; but my one and single desire and aim 
has been to do what is so difficult — viz. to express clearly 

1 Lane Cooper, The Prose Poetry of Thomas De Quincey, p. 32. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 85 

and exactly my meaning ; this has been the motive princi- 
ple of all my corrections and rewritings. When I have 
read over a passage which I had written a few days 
before, I have found it so obscure to myself that I have 
either put it altogether aside or fiercely corrected it ; but I 
don't get any better for practice. I am as much obliged 
to correct and rewrite as I was thirty years ago. 1 

XII. CHARLES LAMB 

You . . . cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain 
way in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put 
the thoughts of a common letter into sane prose. Any 
work which I take upon myself as an engagement will 
act upon me to torment ; e.g., when I have undertaken, 
as three or four times I have, a schoolboy copy of verses 
for Merchant Taylors' boys, at a guinea a copy, I have 
fretted over them, in perfect inability to do them, and 
have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness 
for a week together. 2 

XIII. MANZONI 

The publication, a few months ago, by Francesco Sforza, 
of Brani inediti dei Promessi Sposi ( Unptiblished Passages 
from I Promessi Sposi) has led to a second and enlarged 
edition (964 pages divided into two volumes, whereas the 
original edition was a single volume of 692 pages). The 
reading public, it is evident, has not agreed with those 

1 Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman (ed. Mozley) 
2. 476, 477. 

2 Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb 1. 335, 336. 



86 METHODS AND AIMS 

critics who indignantly regarded Sforza's book as a prof- 
anation of Manzoni's memory in bringing to light what 
had been, after mature judgment, deliberately omitted, 
but has found a special literary value in the steps through 
which the masterpiece developed. The Brani bear witness 
to an incessant correcting, retouching, and polishing, and 
prove to what a degree Manzoni carried his revision, writ- 
ing and rewriting a line a score of times, and then perhaps, 
after all, not printing a word of it. He was moved, appar- 
ently, sometimes by religious scruples, sometimes by aes- 
thetic considerations, or by motives of historical accuracy. 1 

XIV. TENNYSON 

And then he [Tennyson] questioned W[allace] again 
about tropical scenery, producing a poem in ms., from 
which he read two or three lines about palms and purple 
seas. He wanted to know if the palm-trees could be seen 
rising distinct above the rest of the forest. 

W. — ' Yes, on a hill-side.' 

' What color are they ? ' 

' Rather light — gray-green. ' 

'Is an expanse of tropical forest dark, seen from 
above ? ' 

1 Not particularly ; less so than an English woodland.' 

T. — ' Then I must change the word " dark." ' 

He writes his poetry now in trim small quarto books, 
in limp covers, the writing as neat as ever, though some- 
times a little shaky. He keeps these books handy and 
takes them up very often, both at set times and odd 

1 The Nation, November 9, 1905, p. 384. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 87 

moments, considering and correcting, and frequently read- 
ing new poems aloud from them, first to his family and 
afterwards to visitors. After the compositions are put into 
type he usually keeps them by him in proof for a long 
time, months or even years, reconsidering and perfecting 
every part. 1 

XV. STEVENSON 

In his essays he [Stevenson] has told us how he learned 
to write ; and in an essay which appeared in the Contem- 
porary Review of April, 1885, he discloses to us the 
secret of his art. In Memories a,7id Portraits he writes : 
' All through my boyhood and youth I was known and 
pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was 
always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to 
write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, 
one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting 
what I saw with appropriate words ; when I sat by the 
roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a penny 
version-book would be in my hand, to note down the 
features of the scene, or commemorate some halting 
stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus 
wrote was for no ulterior use ; it was written consciously 
for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an 
author (though I wished that too), as that I vowed I would 
learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me ; and 
I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager 
with myself.' All this occurred out of doors. At home 
he continued his attempts with somewhat better results : 
' Whenever I read a book or a passage that pleased me, 

1 William Allingham, A Diary, p. 334. 



88 METHODS AND AIMS 

in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with pro- 
priety, in which there was either some conspicuous force 
or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at 
once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccess- 
ful, and I knew it, and tried again, and was again unsuc- 
cessful, and always unsuccessful ; but at least, in these vain 
bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in 
construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus 
played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Words- 
worth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, 
to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.' 

From this confession we see that Stevenson worked 
consciously and industriously to learn to write, and that 
he attained his goal through imitation of the masters of 
style, through ' ventriloquial efforts.' In his sixth year he 
dictated a Life of Moses, in his ninth he described his 
journey in Perth, in his thirteenth he undertook to do jus- 
tice to the inhabitants of Peebles after the fashion of the 
Book of Snobs. When he was sixteen years old (1866) his 
first printed work appeared, a pamphlet about the insur- 
rection in the Pentlands ; in his twentieth and twenty-first 
years he wrote several essays, which later appeared to- 
gether in the Edinburgh Edition ; about the same time he 
also brought out a few articles in the Edinburgh University 
Magazine. In his twenty-third year he openly appeared 
in the Portfolio with an essay on Roads, in which he 
gave proof that he was already master of his art. From 
this time on, he constantly had articles in various periodi- 
cals ; and in May, 1878, his first book, An Inland Voyage, 
came out. Such diligent creation evinces a very careful 
and profitable period of study, during which he imitated 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 89 

the prose writers and the poets of various centuries, and 
practised in all kinds of stylistic tones, in order to learn 
1 to preserve a fitting key of words, ' such as the easy tone 
in An Apology for Idlers, or as the serious one in Old 
Mortality. Not until he had passed through this severe 
course of training did he attain success, with ' legions of 
words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase 
simultaneously bidding for his choice.' 

This great industry, this conscientious application, 
which were so characteristic of Stevenson in his youth, 
remained with him throughout his whole life. Only sel- 
dom could he say, as he did in reference to Treasure 
Isla?td, that words flowed from his pen in the effortless 
manner in which easy conversation comes from the lips. 
He polished his prose as Tennyson did his poetry, and 
only let work of the best quality go from his hands. In 
the Vailima Letters he writes as follows : 'In the South 
Sea book I have fifty pages copied fair, some of which 
has been four times, and all twice written ; certainly 
fifty pages of solid scriving inside a fortnight.' Further 
on he says : ' As for my damned literature, God knows 
what a business it is, grinding along without a scrap of 
inspiration or a note of style. . . . The last two chapters 
[The South Sea Letters'] have taken me considerably over 
a month, and they are still beneath pity.' Still further : 
' But it [ The Ebb Tide] goes slowly, as you may judge 
from the fact that this three weeks past I have only 
struggled from page 58 to page 82; twenty-four pages, 
et encore sure to be rewritten, in twenty-one days. This 
is no prize-taker ; not much Waverley Novels about 
this ! ' And to conclude : ' I was a living half-hour 



90 METHODS AND AIMS 

upon a single clause, and have a gallery of variants 
that would surprise you.' 

One might, accordingly, object to Stevenson that his 
style is not natural, and therefore not good ; but this charge 
he angrily refutes in his essay on style, in these words : 
1 That style is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, 
which is the most natural, for the most natural is the dis- 
jointed babble of the chronicler ; but which attains the 
highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unob- 
trusively ; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to 
sense and vigor.' And again in Memories and Portraits, 
where he meets the charge of a want of originality, conse- 
quent upon the confession of his imitative attempts : 
' Perhaps I hear some one cry out : " But this is not the 
way to be original ! " It is not ; nor is there any way but 
to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there 
anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your 
originality.' 1 

XVI. LAFCADIO HEARN 

Yet the clothing in words was no small task, as witness 
the accompanying examples [facsimile specimens of origi- 
nal manuscript] of how he labored for the perfection 
of his vehicle. These are not the first struggles of a 
young and clumsy artist, but the efforts at the age of 
fifty-three of one of the greatest masters of English. 

It was done, too, by a man who earned with his pen in 
a year less than the week's income of one of the facile 
authors of the ' six best sellers.' 

1 W. P. Chalmers, Charakteristische Eigenschaften von R.L. Stevenson's 
Stilt pp. i~4- Marburg, 1903. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 91 

As has been said of De Quincey, whom Hearn in 
many ways resembled : * I can grasp a little of his morbid 
suffering in the eternal struggle for perfection of utter- 
ance ; I can share a part of his aesthetic torment over 
cacophony, redundance, obscurity, and all the thousand 
minute delicacies and subtleties of resonance and disso- 
nance, accent and caesura, that only a De Quincey 's ear 
appreciates and seeks to achieve or evade. How many 
care for these fine things to-day ? How many are con- 
cerned if De Quincey uses a word with a long " a " sound, 
or spends a sleepless night in his endeavor to find another 
with the short "a," that shall at once answer his purpose, 
and crown his sentence with harmony ? Who lovingly 
examine the great artist's methods now, dip into the 
secret of his mystery, and weigh verb against adjective, 
vowel against consonant, that they may a little understand 
the unique splendor of this prose ? And who, when an 
artist is the matter, attempt to measure his hopes as well 
as his attainments, or praise a noble ambition perhaps 
shining through faulty attempt ? How many, even among 
those who write, have fathomed the toil and suffering, the 
continence and self-denial of our great artists in words ? ' 2 

1 Elizabeth Bisland, Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn I. 132-135. 



92 METHODS AND AIMS 

XVII. JOWETT 

His theory of preaching was not to read largely, or to 
go through a long elaboration of thought for the special 
occasion, but to take some subject which he had already 
worked out both in thought and in experience, and to 
write it as the direct product of his mind and heart. But 
he was extremely careful, even fastidious, in the expres- 
sion of his thoughts ; and in this, as in every part of his 
work, he gave himself incredible pains, as is evidenced 
by the alterations, erasures, and additions in the manu- 
script. Even the revising of an old sermon cost him 
much. His sense of the importance of care and trouble 
in such matters made him unwilling to publish ; and 
when, in the last two years of his life, in response to the 
request of his old pupils in 1892, he set to work to go 
over his sermons for publication, he was often driven to 
rewrite with great difficulty. In one case he makes the 
following note : * This is the eighth time I have tried to 
rewrite this sermon and have failed.' x 

XVIII. BALZAC 

We have said that Balzac wrought laboriously, and, an 
obstinate caster, ten or a dozen times expelled from his 
crucible the metal which had not exactly filled the mold. 
Like Bernard Palissy, he would have burned his fur- 
niture, his floor, and even the beams of his house, to keep 
up the fire of his furnace, so as not to fail in his experi- 
ment ; the most rigid necessities never made him deliver 

1 Jowett, College Sermons, Preface, pp. vii-viii. 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 93 

a work to his publisher upon which he had not expended 
his utmost effort, and he gave admirable examples of 
literary conscientiousness. His corrections, so numerous 
that they were almost equivalent to different editions of 
the same idea, were charged to his account by the pub- 
lishers, and his compensation, often moderate for the 
value of the work and the trouble it had cost him, was 
diminished in proportion. The promised sums did not 
always arrive when due, and to sustain what he laugh- 
ingly called his floating debt, Balzac displayed prodigious 
resources of mind, and an activity which would have 
completely absorbed the life of an ordinary man. 

But when, seated before his table in his friar's frock, 
in the midst of the nocturnal silence, he found himself 
face to face with blank sheets, upon which was projected 
the light of his luminary of seven candles concentrated by 
a shade, taking pen in hand, he forgot all. And then 
commenced a conflict more terrible than the conflict of 
Jacob with the angel — that between the form and the idea. 
From those battles of each night, at morn he issued 
broken but victorious ; the fire having gone out, and the 
atmosphere of his room being chilled, his head smoked, 
and his body exhaled a mist visible as that from the 
bodies of horses in the winter season. Sometimes a sin- 
gle phrase would occupy him for an entire sitting ; it 
was appraised and re-appraised, twisted, kneaded, ham- 
mered, lengthened, abbreviated — written in a hundred 
different fashions ; and, strangest thing of all ! the nec- 
essary, absolute form presented itself only after the ex- 
haustion of all the approximate forms. Doubtless the 
metal often cooled in a fuller and thicker cast, but 



94 METHODS AND AIMS 

there are very few pages in Balzac which have re- 
mained identical with the first draft. 

His manner of procedure was this : When he had for 
a long time borne and lived a subject, in a handwriting 
rapid, involved, illegible, almost hieroglyphical, he traced 
a sort of scenario of a few pages, which he sent to the 
printers, who returned them in isolated columns in the 
midst of large sheets. He read carefully these columns, 
which already gave to the embryo of his work that imper- 
sonal character which manuscript does not have, and he 
applied to this rough sketch that critical faculty he 
possessed in so eminent a degree, treating his own work 
as if it were the work of another. He approved or he 
disapproved, he confirmed or he corrected ; but he always 
added lines issuing from the beginning, the middle, or the 
end of phrases ; and directed toward the margins, to the 
right, the left, the top, the bottom, lines leading to new 
developments, to insertions, to incidental phrases, to epi- 
thets, to adverbs. At the end of some hours of work one 
would have called his proof-sheet a bouquet of fireworks 
designed by a child. From the primitive text shot forth 
rockets of style which blazed on all sides. Then there 
were simple crosses, and crosses recrossed like those of 
heraldry, stars, suns, figures Arabic and Roman, letters 
Greek or French — all imaginable signs of reference. 
Strips of paper fastened on with wafers or pins added to 
the insufficient margins, and these were striped with lines 
in fine characters for want of space, and full themselves 
of erasures ; for the correction scarce made was at once 
corrected. The printed column was almost lost in the 
midst of this conjuring book of cabalistic appearance, 



PRACTICE IN COMPOSING 95 

which the compositors passed from hand to hand, each 
willing to work only an hour upon Balzac. 

The next day they sent back the proofs, with the 
corrections made, and augmented by half. 

Balzac would again set to work, amplifying always, 
adding a feature, a detail, a description, an observation 
upon manners, a characteristic word, a phrase for effect, 
uniting the idea more closely with the form, always ap- 
proaching nearer his interior design, choosing, like a 
painter, the definite outline from three or four contours. 
Often this terrible work having been accomplished with 
that intensity of application of which he alone was capa- 
ble, he would perceive that the thought had been awk- 
wardly expressed, that an episode predominated, that a 
figure he wished secondary for the general effect did not 
accord with his plan — and with one dash of the pen he 
would courageously demolish the result of four or five 
nights' work. He was heroic in these circumstances. 

Six, seven, and sometimes ten, proofs were sent back, 
with erasures and retouches, without satisfying this au- 
thor's desire for perfection. We have seen at Les Jardies, 
upon the shelves of a library composed of his works 
alone, the different proofs of the same work, from the 
first sketch to the published book, each volume bound 
separately. The comparison of Balzac's thought at its 
different stages offers a very curious study, and must 
contain profitable literary lessons. 1 

1 Theophile Gautier, Honore de Balzac {Famous French Authors, 
New York, 1879, PP- 204-207). 



V 
ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 

I. A GLANCE AT WORDSWORTH'S READING 1 

To his average acquaintance Wordsworth is a comfort- 
ing type of poet ; in order to appreciate him, it would 
seem, one does not need to know very much. What- 
ever he may be to a learned intimate like Mr. Thomas 
Hutchinson, to the labor-shunning dilettante — and even 
to many a serious student of English literature — the poet 
of Rydal Mount is a great non-reading seer of 'nature,' 
uninfluenced by books and neglectful of bookish lore, 
a genius who in a peculiar sense may be contemplated 
apart, and fully understood without recourse to conven- 
tional and irksome scholarly helps. Insisting very prop- 
erly upon accurate first-hand observation of the outer 
world as a basis (though not the only basis) for poetical 
imagery, he owes, if we accept the prevalent view, no 
literary debts such as Shakespeare and Milton patently 
display, and Tennyson, for all his occasional demurring, 
may be forced to acknowledge. f He had,' affirms Lord 
Morley, echoing Emerson, ' no teachers nor inspirers 
save nature and solitude.' 2 Could anything be more 

1 By Lane Cooper. See p. 132, note 2. 

2 Studies in Literature, p. 5. Compare Emerson, English Traits 
{Complete Works, Riverside Edition, 5.243): 'He [Wordsworth] had 
no master but nature and solitude.' 

96 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 97 

explicit ? The late Professor Dowden, it is true, a well- 
schooled Wordsworthian, put the case more gently : ' He 
read what pleased him, and what he considered best, but 
he had not the wide-ranging passion for books of a liter- 
ary student ' ; 1 the veteran critic of Dublin would never 
have agreed with Lord Morley's surprising verdict as it 
stands, yet even he may not have been unbiased by 
traditional opinion. Dr. Brandes, of course, acquires 
his ideas about the ' Lake School ' in the main from 
popular sources, and utters nothing new when he as- 
serts that ' Wordsworth would never describe anything 
with which he was not perfectly familiar ' ; a statement 
that seems to be corroborated by a later hierophant of 
the poet, Professor Raleigh, who speaks thus : ' It is the 
interest of Wordsworth's career, studied as an episode 
in literary history, that it takes us at once to the root of 
the matter, and shows us the genesis of poetry from its 
living material, without literary intermediary. . . . The 
dominant passion of Wordsworth's life owed nothing 
to books.' 2 

He had no teachers, no inspirers, save nature and 
solitude ! The dominant impulse of his life, the poet- 
ical impulse, owed nothing to books ! Is it profitable to 
trace the growth of so untenable a paradox, a paradox 
which Wordsworth, most sensible and straightforward of 
men, would have been the first to deny ? In the main 
its causes have been three. First, there is the usual 
reluctance of the uninitiated to credit any genius with 
the need of external assistance in his work, and an 

1 Poems by Words-worth (ed. Dowden), 1898, p. xxxvii. 

2 Walter Raleigh, Wordsworth, 1903, pp. 44, 45. 



98 METHODS AND AIMS 

allied indolent reluctance of half-initiated criticasters to 
grant that studying his 'sources' — the books that he 
1 devoured, or studiously perused ' — will ever aid us in 
understanding a seer ; as if we did not need a poet's 
education in order to look with a poet's eyes. Secondly, 
and in particular, there has been a persistent misinter- 
pretation of two of Wordsworth's minor pieces, namely, 
Expostulation and Reply and The Tables Turned, in 
which hasty readers have fancied that the poet records 
permanent, not transient, moods ; that he is wholly in 
earnest, not half-playful ; that he is speaking in his own 
character, not in two imaginatively assumed voices ; and 
that here he seriously and finally disclaims all inspiration 
from the great nature that exists in established art and 
science. In The Prelude, where he aims at strict auto- 
biography, Wordsworth may be relied on for a true ac- 
count of his usual reaction to the world of books ; and 
in that poem, if we listen with care, he tells the story of 
his indebtedness to literary influence — of the constant 
relation between a great and happy poet and the best and 
happiest hours of the past. 

Thirdly, there is a cause of widespread misapprehen- 
sion about Wordsworth as a student of both poetry and 
science in the following circumstance : the popular con- 
ception neglects his earlier life, when he read much, for 
his later, when he necessarily read less. The conventional 
sketch by Brandes 1 is a caricature of Wordsworth's per- 
sonality in after-years, when most of his work was done, 
and when, having become a well-known literary figure, 
he was sought out by the lion-hunters. As he grew 

1 Main Currents 4. 43 ff. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 99 

older, Wordsworth doubtless gave relatively less time 
to books. Increasing social demands, repeated prostra- 
tions by bereavement, occasional visits in London, and 
various tours on the Continent must latterly have made 
substantial inroads upon such leisure as he might other- 
wise, perhaps, have employed in study. However, as the 
years went by, a vital hindrance to protracted scholarly 
pursuits arose in his failing eyesight. A weakness of 
the eyes had, indeed, helped to deter Wordsworth as 
a young man, uncertain of his future, from ' taking 
orders ' or entering a learned profession like the law. 
If his vision subsequently was better when he began 
definitely to prepare himself for the career of a poet, 
it was in all probability overtaxed by the scholarly part 
of that preparation. Wordsworth must have suffered 
from some sort of ophthalmic defect nearly all his life. 
By the time he was fifty or sixty years old, though his 
general health was robust, his eyes were ruined ; and 
ruined not wholly by the clerical tasks incidental to 
composition, since members of his family had always 
relieved him of a certain amount of copying. In the 
Atlantic Monthly for February, 1906, Mr. W. C. Hazlitt 
printed a letter from Wordsworth to Lamb (dated Sunday, 
January 10th, 1830), an extract from which discloses 
one good reason why the poet of Rydal Mount could 
not indulge * the wide-ranging passion for books . of a 
literary student ' : ' My dear Lamb : . . . Your present 
of Hone's book was very acceptable ... I wished 
to enter a little minutely into notice of the dramatic 
extracts, and on account of the smallness of the print 
deferred doing so till longer days would allow one to 



ioo METHODS AND AIMS 

read without candlelight, which I have long since given 
up. But alas ! when the days lengthened, my eyesight 
departed ; and for many months I could not read three 
minutes at a time. You will be sorry to hear that this 
infirmity still hangs about me, and almost cuts me off 
from reading altogether.' 

' His eyes, alas ! ' adds his sister in a postscript, ' are 
very weak, and so will, I fear, remain through life ; but 
with proper care he does not suffer much.' 1 

For this reason alone it may be very unjust to inti- 
mate, as F. W. H. Myers and Lord Morley have done, 
that Wordsworth regarded the work of his later contem- 
poraries with great indifference : * Byron and Shelley he 
seems scarcely to have read ; and he failed altogether to 
appreciate Keats.' 2 In point of fact, all three of these 
authors were on Wordsworth's book-shelves when he 
died. Two of them certainly, Byron and Shelley, he 
had read, at least in part, with care — Shelley, as Mor- 
ley's Life of Gladstone shows, with distinct admiration. 
Under the circumstances, little discredit might attach to 
Wordsworth, when he considered how his light was spent, 
had he not read them at all, but given his attention to 
what pleased him more, and what he considered best — 
to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. In real- 
ity, it is astonishing how well he kept up with current 
poetry even late in his career ; and it is strange and 
unfortunate that he has been misrepresented as quite 

1 See also Letters of the Wordsworth Family (ed. Knight) 2. 405- 
406. 

2 Wordsworth, Poetical Works, with an Introduction by John Morley, 
p. lii. In Studies in Literature, where Lord Morley has reprinted this 
Introduction as a separate essay, the sentence from Myers is omitted. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS IOI 

apathetic to the literary productions of others (not to 
mention works of science) all his life, when his eye- 
sight was much impaired during the last thirty or forty 
years of it. I never have read an estimate of Words- 
worth in which this infirmity was properly considered. 
His critics seem to have tacitly assumed that a man 
who * would never describe anything with which he was 
not perfectly familiar ' must have been blessed with un- 
failing eyesight. 

Other circumstances doubtless have had a share in 
sustaining the comfortable paradox of Professor Raleigh. 
For example, the irregularity of Wordsworth's studies at 
Cambridge, though it disquieted him at the time, and 
though he afterwards condemned and lamented it, ap- 
parently has been taken as fairly indicating, the measure 
of his ultimate attainments. Yet his attainments at Cam- 
bridge were at once more solid and more extensive than 
most of his followers have realized. Just after he re- 
ceived his Bachelor's degree his sister wrote : * William 
lost the chance, indeed the certainty, of a fellowship, by 
not combating his inclinations. He gave way to his 
natural dislike to studies so dry as many parts of mathe- 
matics, consequently could not succeed at Cambridge. 
He reads Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Latin, and 
English, but never opens a mathematical book.' 1 Ac- 
cordingly, any censure of this period in his life comes 
less appropriately from some of those who have written 
about him than from the poet himself ; referring to the 
earlier part of his residence at college, he says : 

1 Letter of Dorothy Wordsworth to Jane Pollard, June 26, 1791. 
{Letters of the Wordswo?ih Family 1. 28.) 



102 METHODS AND AIMS 

Not that I slighted books — that were to lack 
All sense, — but other passions in me ruled, 
Passions more fervent, making me less prompt 
To indoor study than was wise or well, 
Or suited to those years. 1 

And again, referring to the latter part : 

The bonds of indolent society 
Relaxing in their hold, henceforth I lived 
More to myself. Two winters may be passed 
Without a separate notice : many books 
Were skimmed, devoured, or studiously perused, 
But with no settled plan. 2 

Between those winters at Cambridge and the time 
when he penned such lines as these, Wordsworth must 
have undergone a change of heart toward ' indoor study ' 
after a ' settled plan.' In the present article it is the in- 
terest of Wordsworth's career, taken as a crucial instance 
of the relation between poetry and scholarship, that it 
shows us a definite attempt by the great English poet of 
nature to supply in the prime of life what he considered a 
defect in his literary training hitherto, in order to fit him- 
self for success in the world of letters. It is true (unless 
he himself is mistaken), even at Cambridge he had imagi- 
native glimpses of the training that he needed : 

Yet I, though used 
In magisterial liberty to rove, 
Culling such flowers of learning as might tempt 
A random choice, could shadow forth a place 
(If now I yield not to a flattering dream) 
Whose studious aspect should have bent me down 
To instantaneous service ; should at once 

1 Prelude 3. 364 ff. 2 Prelude 6. 20 ff. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 103 

Have made me pay to science and to arts 
And written lore, acknowledged my liege lord, 
A homage frankly offered up, like that 
Which I had paid to Nature. 1 

However, it was not, I think, during the years of unrest 
immediately succeeding the ( deep vacation ' of his resi- 
dence at the university that Wordsworth's intellectual 
conversion, if we may so style it, was finally accomplished ; 
not until after his settlement at Racedown ; not, perhaps, 
until his friendship with the polymath Coleridge had been 
cemented. We may assume that this conversion was not 
unrelated to the ' moral crisis ' which he passed through 
after his return from France, or to the attendant change 
in his general attitude to life, which has been described 
with penetration by Professor Legouis. 2 On the other 
hand, that Wordsworth, whether rapidly or gradually, had 
learned the spirit and practice of a more systematic toil 
among books by the time he began to write The Prehtde is, 
I am convinced, unquestionable. Five years later, when he 
was bringing that poem to a close, and when he felt him- 
self competent to pass judgment on the motive forces of 
the French Revolution, he was well aware through what 
sort of literary investigation true insight into history must 
be won. At a prior stage of development, so he says : 

Like others, I had skimmed, and sometimes read 
With care, the master-pamphlets of the day ; 
Nor wanted such half -insight as grew wild 
Upon that meagre soil, helped out by talk 
And public news. 3 

1 Prelude 3. 368 ff. 

2 Emile Legouis, Tlie Early Life of William Wordsworth, pp. 253 ff. 

3 Prehtde 9. 96 ff. 



104 METHODS AND AIMS 

But it is not with any of his special studies in history, 
of whatever time, that we have here to do. For the mo- 
ment, our inquiry concerns his more general literary activ- 
ities subsequent to his establishment at Racedown in 1796. 

Briefly, the case seems to be this. Sometime after the 
legacy from Calvert had put within actual reach Words- 
worth's ideal of a life devoted to poetry, and yet, as we 
have hinted above, possibly not until his intimacy with 
the erudite Coleridge began, Wordsworth came to realize 
that his previous literary and scientific schooling had been 
inadequate, and he shortly bent himself to the Miltonic 
task of ' industrious and select reading,' in conscious 
preparation for his chosen career. Face to face with 
the project of an ample philosophic poem upon nature, 
man, and human society, though undecided on its exact 
subject-matter, he felt the need of supplementing and 
enriching his individual experience ; and hence, being a 
genius possessed of eminent good sense, he disdained 
none of the obvious means to culture. The dominant 
impulse of Wordsworth's life shows the normal debt of 
poetry to books. 

One recalls his mature advice to his nephew : c Re- 
member, first read the ancient classical authors ; then 
come to us ; and you will be able to judge for yourself 
which of us is worth reading.' 1 Still more significant is 
the remark he made to Crabb Robinson : ' When I began 
to give myself up to the profession of a poet for life, I 
was impressed with a conviction that there were four 
English poets whom I must have continually before me 
as examples — Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. 

1 Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of Wordsworth 2. 467. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 105 

These I must study, and equal if I could ; and I need 
not think of the rest.' If we had no other way of 
gauging Wordsworth's attention to these four, we might 
measure it by the evidences of his actual attention to 
'the rest.' l I have been charged by some,' he added, 
' with disparaging Pope and Dryden. This is not so. I 
have committed much of both to memory.' 1 And when 
Hazlitt wrote in The Spirit of the Age : It is mortifying 
to hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom, because 
they have been supposed to have ail the possible excel- 
lencies of poetry, he will allow to have none ' ; Words- 
worth rejoined, privately : ' Monstrous ! . . . I have ten 
times [more] knowledge of Pope's writings, and of Dry- 
den's also, than this writer ever had. To this day [1836] 
I believe I could repeat, with a little rummaging of my 
memory, several thousand lines of Pope.' 2 If we look 
into the question, Wordsworth's familiarity with the lesser 
English poets becomes astonishing ; for neither the ex- 
tent of his acquaintance with them, as indicated, for 
example, in his prefaces, nor the strength of his verbal 
memory, just noted, has been commonly recognized. In 
some minds there seems to be an impression that his sole 
guiding star was Anne, Countess of Winchelsea. 

But it is not within the scope of the present study to 
consider the possible influence of Chaucer, or Spenser, or 
Shakespeare, or Milton on Wordsworth, not to mention 
that of men like Drayton, or Herbert, or Thomson, or 
Bowles ; or to investigate the problem of his debt as a 

1 Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of Wordsworth 2. 470. 

2 William Knight, Wordsworth and Barron Field, in the Academy, 
December 23, 1905. 



I06 METHODS AND AIMS 

meditative poet to his favorite in Latin literature, the 
moral Horace ; or to mark his observation as a rural poet 
of models among the pastoral writers including and pre- 
ceding Spenser, although, as we have seen, Wordsworth's 
own advice is to consult f the ancient classical authors ' — 
in this case Theocritus and Virgil — as a preliminary to 
understanding him. It is enough to affirm that, for every 
type of production he essayed, Wordsworth had the best 
examples continually before him as guides ; Shakespeare's 
Edgar as in some sense a model for the hero of The Idiot 
Boy ; Aeschylus, Horace, and Gray as furnishing stand- 
ards for the Ode to Duty ; and so on. Nor, on the other 
hand, is it possible here, even in a general way, to take 
account of his devotion to science, which grew strong after 
his removal to Racedown, and of which we have striking 
evidences for the period of his residence at Alfoxden. We 
know that he now betook himself to mathematics, which 
at Cambridge he had neglected ; that he became familiar 
with works like those of Linnaeus ; and that he was inter- 
ested in medical treatises such as the Zoonomia of Eras- 
mus Darwin. We gather, too, that the severe beauty of 
\ geometric truth,' pursued after the example of Milton, 
was in course of time reflected in the Ode to Duty ; 
that the poet's nai've contemplation of flowers was forti- 
fied by an acquaintance with systematic botany ; and that 
from technical sources like the Zoonomia he drew in- 
formation on the psychology of the abnormal, which he 
presently used to advantage in ballads like Goody Blake 
and The Idiot Boy. In representing the action of the 
human mind under stress and strain, he constantly betrays 
an acquaintance with the theory of association advanced 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 107 

by David Hartley. Wordsworth's formula in the Preface 
of 1 800 has become classic : * Poetry is the breath and 
finer spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expres- 
sion which is in the countenance of all Science.' Can any 
one really suppose that a man of Wordsworth's sincerity, 
believing this, would have tried to write poetry if he had 
no science ? Nor, furthermore, dare we grapple with the 
problem of Wordsworth's avidity for modern languages — 
for French, which he used much more easily than the 
learned Coleridge, or for German, which he could hardly 
have spoken worse than did Coleridge. We may note, 
as a symptom, that by the time he visited Goslar to prac- 
tice German, Wordsworth was ready to take up ' Norse ' 
as well ; compare the poem beginning : 

A plague on your languages, German and Norse ! 

On the whole, it is safe to assert that in linguistic accom- 
plishments he was not inferior to the translator of Wal- 
lenstein ; and perhaps the day is coming when we shall 
discover that not merely in this, but in more than one 
other direction, the author of the Ode to Duty, who often 
depreciates his own acquisitions, was a more systematic stu- 
dent than the ' myriad-minded ' but desultory Coleridge. As 
M. Aynard judiciously observes, the habit of pretending to 
encyclopaedic knowledge was a malady of the romantic 
spirit. 1 From this malady Wordsworth was exempt. 

In any case, our poet's reading after 1795, and more 
particularly about 1 797-1 798, was various and extensive 
— so extensive as to call for industry on the part of any 
one who tries to duplicate it ; and was chosen as an aid, 

1 Revue Germaniqtie I. 126. 



108 METHODS AND AIMS 

direct or indirect, to literary composition. In the present 
article we can only touch upon a single aspect of his in- 
debtedness to books ; and the study must be regarded as 
preliminary rather than finished. However, any new ray 
of light upon Wordsworth's activities shortly before the 
publication of Lyrical Ballads is likely to prove welcome. 

In recounting the origin of The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner, Wordsworth has told us that the fateful death 
of the Albatross was a direct suggestion to Coleridge from 
him. He had been reading about this ominous bird in 
Shelvocke's Voyages, a book, he significantly adds, 
'which probably Coleridge never saw.' 1 Now Coleridge's 
acquaintance with books of travel may be set down as 
reasonably wide ; at all events it was not merely 'casual/ 
as M. Legouis has termed it. 2 Was Wordsworth's ac- 
quaintance wider ? If so, there is nevertheless something 
more strange than that. Here is Wordsworth, who 
' would never describe anything with which he was not 
perfectly familiar/ caught in the act of imaging for 
Coleridge, and for a poem in which the two were collabo- 
rating, a creature which in all probability neither could have 
seen in the flesh ; drawing inspiration, not from ' nature ' 
or ' solitude/ but from a stirring narrative of adventure 
and discovery ; and, in a capital instance, clearly exhibiting 
the * genesis of poetry ' out of dead (?) material, with an 
eighteenth-century sea-captain for 'literary intermediary.' 

George Shelvocke's A Voyage round the World by the 
Way of the Great South Sea (London, 1726) was * Per- 
form 'd/ as the title-page records, ' in the Years 1719, 20, 

1 Poetical Works of Coleridge (ed. Campbell), p. 594. 

2 The Early Life of Wordsworth, p. 422. 



OX THE STUDIES OF POETS 109 

21, 22, in the Speedwell of London, of 24 Guns and 100 
Men, (Under His Majesty's Commission to cruize on the 

Spaniards in the late War with the Spanish Crown; till 
she was cast away on the Island of Juan Fernandes, in 
May, 1720; and afterwards continu'd in the Recovery, 
the Jesus Maria and Sacra Familia, etc." The book illus- 
trates one main direction in Wordsworth's studies during 
his outwardly quiet life at Alfoxden. Prior to his depar- 
ture for Germany in 1798, he had probably worked through 
dozens of similar narratives, whether of wanderings by sea 
or of adventures in distant lands ; for, aside from the fact 
that they were congenial to his roving and impetuous 
imagination, such accounts described for him in ' the lan- 
guage of real men ' — men who were first-hand and ar- 
dent observers of nature — regions which the poet could 
never himself hope to traverse, but with which, for specific 
purposes, he wished to be acquainted. ! Of the amassing 
of knowledge,' remarks Professor Raleigh, "... he had 
always thought lightly.' The dates are for the most part 
impossible to fix, but within a very few years Words- 
worth read accounts of Dalecarlia, Lapland, and northern 
Siberia ; he studied in some form the physical geography 
of portions of south-eastern Europe ; he made acquaint- 
ance, it seems, with Wilson's Pelew Islands; 1 he read 
Hearne's Hudson 's Bay 'with deep interest,' 2 and knew 
the Great Lakes through the Travels of Jonathan Carver. 3 

1 Cf. Athenaei{m, 1905, 1. 49S. 

2 "Wordsworth, Poetical JVorks, with an Introduction by John Morley, 
p. 85. 

3 See Poems by Wordsuiorth (ed. Dowden), 1898, pp. 41S. 419: and 
compare Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes (ed. E. de Selincourt, 1906), 
pp. 39, 176^-177. 



HO METHODS AND AIMS 

If he did not carry Bartram's Travels in Georgia, Florida, 
etc., with him to Germany, he must have had that enter- 
taining journal almost by heart before he started. 1 In this 
book, of course, his interest in travel was re-enforced by 
his interest in botany. It is clear that he was acquainted 
also with the much earlier and more fiery expedition to 
Florida of Dominique de Gourgues; 2 and, if so, he had 
access less probably to the original of Basanier than to the 
translation in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations. In that 
case it would be hard to say where his delvings in itiner- 
aries ceased. In the meantime his friend and teacher, 
Coleridge, was busy with tomes like the Pilgrimage of 
Samuel Purchas, Hakluyt's industrious successor, and the 
Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain James, not to 
speak of Bartram and others. Sixty years afterward, in 
the catalogue made up for a posthumous sale of Words- 
worth's library at Rydal Mount, we find not only Purchas, 
Hearne, and Shelvocke, but, besides a very considerable 
array of travels published after the year 1800, more than 
twenty such titles as the following : Bianchi's Account of 
Switzerland (17 10); Buchanan, Rev. J. L., Travels in 
the Western Hebrides (1793); Burnet, Gilbert, Travels in 
France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland (1 / '62); Busbe- 
quius' Travels into Turkey (1744) ; An Account of Den- 
mark as it was in l6Q2 (1694) ; Howell's Instructions for 
Forreine Travell (1650); Account of the Kingdom of 
Hungary (17 1 7); Mavor, Rev. W., Collection of Voyages, 
Travels, and Discoveries, from the Time of Columbus to 
the Present (1796, etc.), twenty-one volumes ; Account of 

1 Cf. Athenaeum, 1905, 1. 498 ff. 

2 Cf. Prelude 1. 206 ff. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS ill 

Voyages to the South and North, by Sir John Narborough 
and others ( 1 694) ; Voyages and Travels, Some now first 
printed from Original Manuscripts, others now first pub- 
lished in English, with Introdtictory Discoitrse supposed 
to be written by the celebrated Mr. Locke (1744), five 
volumes; Psalmanazar's Description of Formosa (1794); 
Ray, John, F.R.S., Observations made in a Journey in 
the Low Countries, Germany and France (1673); Travels 
in Divers Parts of Europe, etc., etc., with Observations 
on the Gold, Silver, Copper, Quicksilver and Other Mines, 
etc. (1687) ; Vocabidary of Sea Phrases, etc. (1799). It 
is reasonable to assume that if Wordsworth knew Shel- 
vocke and Hearne before 1800, he knew at least a few 
of these works too. It is clear also that not all of his col- 
lection of travels and voyages can be found in the cata- 
logue of sale in 1859. 1 For example, Bruce's Travels to 
Discover the Sources of the Nile ( 1 790) is wanting ; yet 
Wordsworth certainly owned a copy of this book, since in 
the memoranda that he tried to keep at Rydal Mount of all 
volumes borrowed from his shelves, one entry records the 
lending of Bruce. 2 Further, no one can say to what limit 
the poet's own borrowing of books may not have gone 
before he had money to buy them with any degree of 
freedom. In middle life, or at all events in a letter that 
may belong to the year 1 8 1 1 , he wrote to Archdeacon 
Wrangham : ' I see no new books except by the merest 
accident. . . . You inquire about old books; you might 
almost as well have asked for my teeth as for any of 

1 See Transactions of the Wordsworth Society 6. 197—257. 

2 The manuscript of these memoranda is now part of the Harry 
Elkins Widener collection in the Harvard University Library. 



112 METHODS AND AIMS 

mine. The only modern books that I read are those of 
travels, or such as relate to matters of fact — and the 
only modern books that I care for ; but as to old ones 
I am like yourself — scarcely anything comes amiss to 
me. The little time I have to spare — the very little, I 
may say — all goes that way.' 1 Unfortunately I have 
been unable to consult all of the works that I am aware 
the poet knew even prior to 1799. 

The external evidence on the reading of both Words- 
worth and Coleridge during their fruitful intimacy in 
Somerset, and later at Grasmere, is, in fact, very frag- 
mentary. Tradition pictures the two men wandering with 
Dorothy Wordsworth in the beautiful country-side around 
Alfoxden, Coleridge apparently as heedless of ' indoor 
study ' as Wordsworth himself. The ' indoor,' or bookish, 
history of that episode, so critical in their lives and in 
English literature, has aroused no general curiosity, and 
has sunk into undeserved oblivion. Sufficient pains, how- 
ever, might yet reconstruct a valuable outline. We say 
' bookish,' rather than ' indoor,' for Wordsworth not only 
composed in the open, but by day did much of his read- 
ing there — partly, perhaps, on account of his eyes. Of 
his ways in the North he tells us the following story : 
' One day a stranger, having walked round the garden and 
grounds of Rydal Mount, asked one of the female serv- 
ants, who happened to be at the door, permission to see 
her master's study. "This," said she, leading him forward, 
"is my master's library, where he keeps his books, but 
his study is out of doors." ' 2 

1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family (ed. Knight) 2. 128. 

2 Wordsworth, Poetical Works (ed. Morley), p. 564. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 1 13 

But with reference to books of travel and the like : 
judged chiefly from scattered hints in contemporary or 
slightly subsequent poems, Wordsworth's studies in de- 
scriptive geography during the first few years after his 
establishment at Racedown, in 1795, seem to have ex- 
tended from some unidentified notice of our Western 
prairies to an account of the Andes, perhaps in the 
record of the Spanish priest Molina, thence to the Straits 
of Magellan and Le Maire, thence to the Canaries, 
thence to the heart of Abyssinia, a region which ne knew 
probably in the pages of the intrepid explorer Bruce, if 
not likewise in Dr. Johnson's translation of Lobo, 1 and so 
on to Tartary and Cathay, as pictured by those whom he 
calls the l pilgrim friars ' — among them doubtless Odoric. 
Our survey intentionally neglects itineraries dealing with 
Great Britain and parts of the Continent that Wordsworth 
visited in person, although his use of such itineraries can- 
not be questioned, any more than their effect upon what 
he wrote. He had commenced such borrowings even be- 
fore 1793 ; in a note to line 307 of Descriptive Sketches 
he- remarks : ' For most of the images in the next six- 
teen verses, I am indebted to M. Raymond's interesting 
observations annexed to his translation of Coxe's Tour 
in Switzerland.' 2 

Whatever the extent and solidity of this reading, its 
purpose must not be mistaken. I quote the poet's own 
opinion on the importance of the literature of travel as 
an ' intermediary ' in the ' genesis ' of his poetry. Writing 

1 He was familiar with Rasselas. Cf. Wordsworth' 's Guide to the Lakes 
(ed. E. de Selincourt, 1906), p. 48. 

2 This indebtedness is much more extensive than Wordsworth 
indicates. See Legouis, The Early Life of Wordsworth, pp. 475-477. 



114 METHODS AND AIMS 

from Alfoxden on the sixth of March, 1798, six months, 
it will be observed, before the publication of Lyrical Bal- 
lads, Wordsworth says to his friend James Tobin : ' If 
you could collect for me any books of travel, you would 
render me an essential service, as without much of such 
reading my present labors cannot be brought to any 
conclusion.' 

By his l present labors ' Wordsworth meant the great 
poem which was to be the main work of his life ; this 
poem he had by that time commenced, but was destined 
never to organize as a perfect and unified whole. Five 
days after his letter to Tobin he informs another friend, a 
Mr. Losh of Cumberland : ' I have been tolerably indus- 
trious within the last few weeks ; I have written 706 
lines of a poem which I hope to make of considerable 
utility. Its title will be The Recluse, or Viezvs of Nature, 
Man, and Society! x Why Wordsworth was never able to 
complete this work as he designed is a large question that 
may not be broached at present. It was carefully treated by 
the late Professor Minto in The Nineteenth Century for 
September, 1889 ; yet there is more to be said. Parenthet- 
ically, we might offer as one possible reason for ' Words- 
worth's great failure' 2 the very fact that he began his 
direct preparation somewhat late, and that, unlike his 
grand exemplar, Milton, he was unduly impatient to 
produce on a large scale. And we may add as another 
reason the fact that, again unlike Milton, Chaucer, Spen- 
ser, and Shakespeare, he sundered his poetical activity 
too far from the practical life of his nation. However 

1 Knight, Life of Wordstvorth i. 148. 

2 Wordsworth's Great Failure, in The Nineteenth Century 26. 435-451. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 115 

that may be, Wordsworth's great tripartite poem is now 
represented to us by a body of verse, that, noble as it may 
be, is nevertheless, as a whole, structurally imperfect. In 
his own opinion, at any rate, it is imperfect in such sense 
as an unfinished ' Gothic church ' may be so deemed ; it 
consists, first, of an ' ante-chapel, ' The Prelude, so-called ; 
secondly, of parts of the main structure, namely, The Re- 
cluse, so-called, and The Excursion ; thirdly, of most, if not 
all, of the shorter pieces — ' little cells, oratories, and sepul- 
chral recesses' — produced by Wordsworth between 1797, 
or earlier, and 18 14. The figure from architecture is the 
poet's own. 1 We are entitled, however, to regard many 
of his briefer poems as material which he was desirous of 
ultimately using in the construction of the 'nave' (had he 
been destined ever to complete this), and not as mere 
side-chapels in his imaginary cathedral. 

The effect of Wordsworth's reading of travels is 
discernible throughout this poetry ; it may be detected 
in some of his best and most familiar passages. The 
Prologue to Peter Bell is full of its influence ; indeed 
the whole poem, being in fact Wordsworth's Rime of 
the Ancient Mariner — that is, the ballad of a wanderer, 
which he evolved when he had found himself unable to 
compose jointly with Coleridge — breathes the spirit of a 
born and bred peripatetic. A tinge from the American 
naturalist William Bartram is visible in the lines There 
was a Boy, in the Stanzas written in my Pocket-Copy of 
Thomsons K Castle of Indolence,' in She was a Phantom 
of Delight, in parts of The Prelude and The Recluse, 
and perhaps in The Excursion. Ruth in places follows 

1 Wordsworth, Poetical Works (ed. Morley), p. 415. 



Ii6 METHODS AND AIMS 

Bartram word for word. The Affliction of Margaret 

almost certainly carries a reminiscence of Wilson's Pelew 
Islands. The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman is 
confessedly founded on Hearne. Something from Carver 
lurks in the exquisite lines on that ' faery voyager,' Hartley 
Coleridge at the age of six, and appears at least once in 
The Excursion. 1 In Book Eighth of The Prelude it may 
be one of the mediaeval ' pilgrim friars ' mentioned in 
Book Seventh that furnishes Wordsworth with his mar- 
velous vision of the Mongolian paradise Jehol. — There 
seems to be an instructive parallel here to Coleridge's 
Kubla Khan, which sprang from his remembrance of 
mediaeval lore gathered together in Purchas his Pilgrim- 
age. Such reading helps to explain the continual referen- 
ces in Wordsworth to distant lands and seas in general ; 
for instance : 

The ante-chapel where the statue stood 

Of Newton with his prism and silent face, 

The marble index of a mind for ever 

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone ; 2 

lines, accordingly, whose inspiration is to be attributed not 
entirely to ' the equally happy lines ' in Thomson's Death 
of Isaac Newton. 2, It throws light also upon his frequent 
allusions to wanderers, sea-captains, and the like ; as, for 
example, to the ' horsemen-travelers ' in Ruth, or to the 
ideal retired ' captain of a small trading vessel,' described 
in an instructive note appended by Wordsworth in 1800 

1 For the preceding statements, see the references given above, 
pp. 109, no; Carver's word for the whippoorwill, the Muccawiss, oc- 
curs in a passage from The Excursion quoted at the end of the present 
article. 2 Prelude 3. 60 ff. 

3 Legouis, The Early Life of Wordsworth, p. 79, note. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 117 

to The Thorn} His fondness for the literature of travel 
explains to our complete satisfaction the readiness with 
which he accepted Coleridge's suggestion for The Blind 
Highland Boy. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, at 
first set his blind hero afloat in an ordinary washing-tub. 
When Coleridge informed his brother-poet of the lad in 
Dampier's New Voyage round the World (1697) who 
went aboard his father's ship in a tortoise-shell, Words- 
worth made the substitution without delay. 2 

We need not multiply instances. If space allowed, 
certain broader influences ought also to be discussed, in 
order to solve the question why Wordsworth, himself born 
with the instincts of an itinerant — a pedlar, he says, — 
with his favorite brother, John, a seaman, should call the 
first book of his longest poem * The Wanderer,' and the 
whole poem The Excursion ; or why, in characterizing his 
autobiography, that is, The Prelude, he should observe : 

A Traveler I am, 
Whose tale is only of himself. 3 

Books, he says, were Southey's passion ; 'and wandering, 
I can with truth affirm, was mine ; but this propensity in 
me was happily counteracted by inability from want of 
fortune to fulfil my wishes.' 4 

Let us come, however, to something more brief and 
tangible — a definite illustration of Wordsworth's indebt- 
edness to a literary medium in his ideal representations 

1 Wordsworth, Poetical Works (Aldine Edition, ed. Dowden), 
2. 306, 307. 

2 Cf. Coleridge, Anima Poetae (ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 1895), 
pp. 175, 176. 

3 Prelude 3. 195, 196. 

4 Wordsworth, Poetical Works (ed. Morley), p. 408. 



Ii8 METHODS AND AIMS 

of nature. According to a German dissertation by Dr. 
Oeftering, 1 since Wordsworth had never seen a pelican, 
all that he knew of this classic bird was the mediaeval 
fable that the female fed her young with her own heart's 
blood ; like revolutionary France, she 

. . . turned an angry beak against the down 
Of her own breast. 2 

It looks as if Dr. Oeftering had not been studying Turin's 
Wordsworth Dictionary any more assiduously than The 
Prelude. In Book Third, Wordsworth, with a censuring 
eye upon the Cambridge of his day and its uninspiring 
landscape, calls up in imaginative contrast his vision of 
what the surroundings of a seat of learning ought to be : 

Oh, what joy 
To see a sanctuary for our country's youth 
Informed with such a spirit as might be 
Its own protection ; a primeval grove, 
Where, though the shades with cheerfulness were filled, 
Nor indigent of songs warbled from crowds 
In under-co verts, yet the countenance 
Of the whole place should bear a stamp of awe ; 
A habitation sober and demure 
For ruminating creatures ; a domain 
For quiet things to wander in ; a haunt 
In which the heron should delight to feed 
By the shy rivers, and the pelican 
Upon the cypress spire in lonely thought 
Might sit and sun himself. 3 

This is not the least beautiful passage in The Prelude, 
nor the least curious. Aside from the present connection, 

1 W. Oeftering, Wordsworth? s und Byron 's Natur-Dichtung, Karls- 
ruhe, 1901, p. 160. 

2 Excursion 8. 818, 819. 3 Prelude 3. 427 ff. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 1 19 

it is of considerable interest as a document in pedagogy. 
The * romantic ' poet, influenced no doubt by the educa- 
tional doctrines of Rousseau, is mentally transporting 
the youth of England, not merely to the land of social 
freedom, America, but to an aboriginal landscape and 
the home of the ' natural man,' the ' naked Indian.' The 
whole passage — ruminating creatures, pelican, cypress 
spire, and all — is a remarkable adaptation of a scene 
depicted by the Quaker botanist, William Bartram, on 
the banks of the Altamaha in Georgia : 1 1 ascended this 
beautiful river,' says Bartram, ' on whose fruitful banks 
the generous and true sons of liberty securely dwell, fifty 
miles above the white settlements. . . . My progress was 
rendered delightful by the sylvan elegance of the groves, 
cheerful meadows, and high distant forests, which in 
grand order presented themselves to view. The winding 
banks of the river, and the high projecting promontories, 
unfolded fresh scenes of grandeur and sublimity. The 
deep forests and distant hills re-echoed the cheering 
social lowings of domestic herds. The air was filled with 
the loud and shrill hooping of the wary sharp-sighted 
crane. Behold, on yon decayed, defoliated cypress tree, 
the solitary wood pelican, dejectedly perched upon its 
utmost elevated spire ; he there, like an ancient venerable 
sage, sets himself up as a mark of derision, for the 
safety of his kindred tribes.' 1 

In the London Athenaeum for April 22, 1905, 2 having 
pointed out the parallel just noted, I tried to suggest 

1 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West 
Florida, etc., London, 1794, pp. 47, 48. 

2 Athenaeum, 1905, 1. 498 ff. 



120 METHODS AND AIMS 

reasons why Wordsworth, a scientific poet, should be 
drawn to the record of a poet-scientist and traveler like 
Bartram ; I was, however, unable to do more than shadow 
forth the way in which the dominant imagination at work 
in The Prelude selected and appropriated its poetic mate- 
rial, from whatever source. It may be that the principle 
of selection is obvious enough simply on comparison of 
the two excerpts here brought together. The principle of 
appropriation must also pass without further comment 
than this : in the case before us — as has been said, a typ- 
ical case, — what he learned from Bartram may have lain 
dormant in the poet's mind for something like five years, 
awaiting utilization. 1 It had become an assimilated expe- 
rience, and was in the nature of a purified emotion ' recol- 
lected in tranquillity.' Wordsworth differentiates it in no 
way from such other ' living material ' as he gathered 
through his personal observation of the external world 
about him ; so much is certain. 

By way of appendix, several less definite considerations 
and queries are herewith presented ; some of them bearing 
more directly upon Wordsworth, or upon Wordsworth and 
Coleridge ; some of them concerning rather the literary 
* movement ' in which Wordsworth has been recognized 
as a leader ; all of them connected with the literature of 
travel. The present writer ventures to hope that one or 
two of them may stimulate a useful curiosity, and that his 
effort may eventually lead to a comprehensive study of 
the relation between geographical discovery during the 

1 Wordsworth became familiar with Bartram, so it seems, at Alfox- 
den. The passage in The Prelude was composed, so far as we know, at 
Grasmere in 1804. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 121 

latter part of the eighteenth century and that release of 
the imagination and renewal of poetic wonder which char- 
acterize the so-called l return to nature ' in the literature 
of ' romanticism.' 

1. Wordsworth's imagination has sometimes been dis- 
paraged as relatively narrow and insular, though not by 
those who have known him well. As a poet he was 
restricted in his choice of subjects, and restrained in his 
treatment of such themes as he finally decided to employ. 
These limitations, however, were in his case matters of 
conscious will and artistic habit. He took but a part of 
the world for his stage. Yet his view of the world was 
free and large. Insular he was not. He came of an 
island race whose gaze has been fixed from earliest times 
upon a watery horizon, and he flourished during a period 
of utmost interest on the part of England in colonies be- 
yond many seas. It is worthy of note that on April 7, 
1770, when Wordsworth was born, James Cook, who was 
making his first voyage of discovery in the Pacific, was 
on his way from New Zealand to Australia. Furthermore, 
at the time when his poetical genius was most rapidly 
developing, Wordsworth was living, not in the Lake 
District of England, but within walking distance of a 
great shipping thoroughfare, the Bristol Channel, and 
not in ' solitude,' but in daily communion with an author 
whose best-known production is The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner. 

2. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is likewise the 
best-known poem of the collection called Lyrical Ballads. 
But that Wordsworth was in large measure responsible for 
the plot of this poem, or that he furnished considerably 



122 METHODS AND AIMS 

more of its details than he afterwards remembered, can- 
not be set down as a matter of common knowledge. Its 
joint authorship, however, concerns us only in so far as 
the poem represents similar reading done by both its 
authors. Of the Lyrical Ballads as a whole we may say 
that attention has been too exclusively paid in the history 
of literature to the relation between these and other bal- 
lads, above all, the popular ballads exploited by Thomas 
Percy. When all is said, the fact remains that these 
'experiments' of Coleridge and Wordsworth are not 
what are technically known as popular ballads ; they are 
not nai've, but sophisticated and literary. As for their 
material, that is obviously not drawn from Percy and 
the rest so much as it is from eighteenth-century books 
of travel. And these latter are but one set of x sources.' 

Again, it has been remarked by more than one of our 
modern scholars that the revolt of Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
and Bowles against the tradition of the age of Queen 
Anne was in many essentials a return to the standards of 
Spenser and Milton. Very true. In the Advertisement 
to Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth himself declares 
that ' The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere was professedly 
written in imitation of the style, as well as of the spirit 
of the elder poets.' Here we are on familiar ground. But 
has it been anywhere remarked how essentially that revolt 
meant a recourse on the part of the new school, not 
merely to their own observation of nature, but to the 
observation of the best contemporary natural scientists? 

3. It is, in fact, surprising to see with what unerring 
instinct Wordsworth and, to a lesser extent, Coleridge 
betook themselves to what we now can recognize as the 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 1 23 

most trustworthy descriptions of natural phenomena by 
scientific and semi-scientific men of their day. We may 
regard it as a distinctive mark of great poets that, being 
themselves potential scientists, and having acquired the 
touchstone for truth to nature by supremely honest use of 
their own senses upon such phenomena as fall within the 
range of their own experience, they are able to test the 
validity of more technical observers, and, in appropriating 
information from the printed page, to separate safe from 
unsafe popular authorities. Accordingly, if Coleridge 
dealt too freely in questionable matters like the miracles 
treasured up by credulous geographers of the seventeenth 
century, and like Bryan Edwards' account of Obi witch- 
craft, the point remains that both he and Wordsworth 
quickly found their way to eighteenth-century treatises of 
permanent value like Edwards' West Indies, Bartram's 
Travels, Bruce's Travels, and Hearne's Journey} After 
all, was this so strange ? The enthusiastic scientist or the 
inquiring traveler keeps his eye f fixed upon his object ' ; 
in describing, he speaks the language, not of Pope, but of 
a man in the presence of reality. The language of Shel- 
vocke and James and Carver was ' language really used 
by men,' and by men often in a state of lively, yet nor- 
mal, emotion. In Expostulation and Reply Wordsworth 
covertly ridicules ' modern books of moral philosophy.' 2 
Setting these aside, we may imagine that the tastes of the 
two poets while they were writing Lyrical Ballads were 
mutually influential. Hence, and for other reasons, it is 

1 Cf . Coleridge, Poetical Works (ed. Campbell), p. 590; Coleridge's 
Poems, Facsimile Reproduction, p. 173 ; Athenaeum, January 27, 1894. 

2 See the Advertisement to the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, 



124 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

not unlikely that the Strange and Dangerous Voyage of 
that very real man Captain Thomas James — poet and 
Arctic explorer — became familiar to both about the same 
time ; though we have no positive proof that Wordsworth 
read James before the year 1819. 1 

4. But Wordsworth and Coleridge were not alone in 
this wide sea of reading. Bowles, who was to some ex- 
tent responsible for the ' movement ' — ' the return to 
nature ' — which gained impetus through the publication 
of Lyfical Ballads, may after a fashion have shown the 
way in this direction also. For the student of that period 
Bowles is useful in that he takes care to indicate his 
sources. These, as his foot-notes show, 2 are principally 
the ' elder poets,' above all Milton and Shakespeare, and 
the travelers. Thus he proves himself conversant with 
Bartram, Bruce, Camoens, Chateaubriand, Craven, Forster, 
Molina, Park, De Quiros, Shaw, Southey, Stothard, and 
Zarco. One of his earlier poems, Abba Thule, harks back 
to Wilson's Pelezv Islands. Among his later and longer 
attempts, The Spirit of Discovery by Sea catches our 
attention by its title. This and The Missionary, which 
is still later, bear ample testimony to his love of the won- 
ders related by such as go down to the sea in ships. 
Whether Bowles may be thought to have stimulated his 
admirer Coleridge, and Coleridge's friend Wordsworth, in 
this interest, or whether they reacted rather upon him, or 

1 Cf. Poems and Extracts chosen by William Wordsworth for an 
Album presented to Lady Mary Lowther, Christmas, i8iq (ed. Harold 
Littledale), London, 1905, pp. iv,8i ; Athenaeum, 1906, 1. 325 ; Coleridge, 
Poetical Works (ed. Campbell), pp. 595, 596. 

2 I refer to later editions of Bowles ; specifically to that by Gilfillan, 
Edinburgh, 1855, which is a reprint of the edition of 1837. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 125 

whether all three were carried on in a stream already 
strong, the truth is that such poetry of the eighteenth 
century as distinctly belongs with the poetry at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth is, like the latter, permeated with 
the spirit of travel. We may follow this spirit from 
Cowper's ' Selkirk ' to Keats' fine lines on Chapman's 
Homer, notwithstanding Keats' mistake of Cortez for 
Balboa. We may find it in a forgotten poet of sylvan 
nature like Thomas Gisborne. 1 Southey, who read every- 
thing, was both a traveler and an inveterate student of 
travels. So also was Byron. 2 If we look toward France 
at the turn of the century, so also was Chateaubriand. Nor 
could there be a better ethical criterion of his literary 
methods than his use of Bartram in A tala, compared with 
Wordsworth's conscientious treatment of the same ma- 
terial in Ruth and in The Prelude. The dubious filching 
from Bartram, Carver, and others in Chateaubriand's 
Journal en Amerique has been sharply censured in M. 
Bedier's Eticdes Critiques? 

For anything dealing half so thoroughly with a com- 
parable indebtedness, censurable or praiseworthy, among 
English authors, we have still to wait. Not that a con- 
sideration of the literature of travel in some connection 
with other literary problems during the last quarter of the 
eighteenth century has been wholly omitted. But it is a 
matter of regret that in her useful study, The Treatment 
of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Words- 
worth, Miss Reynolds should have regarded simply the 

1 Author of Walks in a Forest, 1794. Gisborne is not mentioned by 
Miss Reynolds in the dissertation referred to below. 

2 Cf. J. C. Collins, Studies in Poetry avd Criticism, 1905, pp. 87 ff. 

3 Joseph Bedier, Etudes Critiques, Paris, 190.3, pp. 127 ff. 



126 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

eighteenth-century itineraries within Great Britain and 
Ireland, and neglected those without. 1 And it is unfor- 
tunate, furthermore, that even so far as these local itiner- 
aries are concerned, she should have noted merely the 
increasing sympathy with external nature which they in 
themselves disclose, and that she should not have aimed 
to measure the reaction between them and the later 
eighteenth-century poets. Yet in many cases it might 
be puzzling to disentangle any given poet's own direct 
impressions of the outer world from his debts to books 
of travel in England ; whereas the problem becomes rela- 
tively distinct when it is a question of this or that poet's 
description of some landscape in America or China that 
he surely never beheld. 

5. The interest that the poets of Wordsworth's genera- 
tion took in foreign travels is paralleled notably by a sim- 
ilar interest on the part of those f elder poets ' whom they 
studied and tried to equal ; it is in striking contrast to the 
relative lack of interest on the part of literary men during 
the intervening epoch of pseudo-classicism. The age of 
Elizabeth read geography, because, for one thing, there 
was new geography to read. The age of Anne did not, in 
the main because there was then a lull in geographical 
discovery. 

In that efflorescence of intellect which followed the 
cloistered Middle Ages, and which we have been content 
to call the Renaissance, certain wholly new experiences 
were borne in upon the minds of Europeans ; a certain 
amount of inspiring knowledge was, not revived through 
study of the classics — indeed, not awakened through any 
1 University of Chicago dissertation, 1896, chap, iv, pp. 192 ff, 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 127 

sources previously accessible or familiar, — but acquired by 
the Old World for the first time since the dawn of Oriental 
civilization. This wholly fresh knowledge, these new ex- 
periences, these novel and vivid appeals from an enlarged 
external nature, came into Europe chiefly by way of the 
western sea. It would be idle to dilate here, or to refine, 
upon the influence of maritime discovery on the Renais- 
sance ; yet of that influence two aspects at least must be 
kept in view. First, whereas the Middle Ages learned 
geography in large measure from itinerants who had trod 
the land, the Renaissance had its imagination quickened 
rather by an access of knowledge from across the ocean. 
Now, since the days of Homer, the soul of man has been 
stimulated less urgently by overland communication than 
by marine. Secondly, if we carefully examine almost any 
typical author of the Renaissance, for example, Rabelais, 
we shall find his knowledge of geography about as exact 
as the state of the science then permitted. 1 This probably 
is true of Shakespeare ; it undoubtedly is true of Milton. 2 
It may pass for a truism that the great development of 
geography as a body of information was a product of the 
Renaissance, although the discipline did not in general 
attain any very high degree of accuracy until after the 
middle of the eighteenth century. Though Humboldt was 
not born until 1769, nor Ritter until a decade later, yet 
after 1750, we may say, the study which they were to 
dominate had already begun to be a science in the modern 
sense of the term. In the meantime, and especially from 

1 Cf. Abel Lefranc, Les Navigations de Pantagruel : Etude sur la 
Geograph ie Rabelaisien ne. 

2 Cf- Modern Language Notes, March, 1906, p. 86. 



128 METHODS AND AIMS 

about 1700 on, there had been a distinct falling off, if 
not in the effort to order such facts as were known, at 
all events in the eagerness and rapidity with which new 
geographical data were acquired and made popular. It is 
to be emphasized that this epoch of comparative lethargy 
in observation corresponds to the period during which 
Alexander Pope was active and the pseudo-classic move- 
ment in literature was at its height. 

After 1750 geography began to grope its way into the 
status of a modern science. The date of its clear emer- 
gence may be set for convenience' sake at 1770, when 
Cook was finishing his first voyage in the Pacific — the 
year of the birth of Wordsworth. Books of travel, which 
had been steadily growing more frequent, and on the 
whole more trustworthy, now came out in great numbers, 
the best of them appearing again in reissues and large col- 
lections. Their increase is easily illustrated. Pinkerton's 
lists, which are inclusive enough for the purpose, record, 
for example, but five titles of travels through Denmark 
and Norway published between 1700 and 1750. For the 
period 1 750-1 800 they record under the same head six 
times that number. Of these thirty, twenty-two appeared 
after 1770. 1 Moreover, as Miss Reynolds has noted, 
toward the end of the century the publication of foreign 
discoveries rapidly overbalanced that of itineraries dealing 
with England. 

With these generalizations in hand, will it seem super- 
fluous to insist that the relation between the discoveries 
and the wide-ranging imagination of the Renaissance is 
hardly more deserving of attention than is the relation 

1 Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels (18 14) 17. 72-75. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 129 

between the modern, exact science of geography and that 
second renaissance of poetry which we trace in the age of 
Wordsworth ? And will it seem inconsequent to suggest 
that a false limitation of the term ' nature ' has done much 
to befog our understanding of him and other poets who 
are said to have returned to her ? Might we not be at 
once more precise and more philosophical, if, with refer- 
ence to this tendency in the ' romantic ' mind, we employed 
some such expression as ' the return to geography,' using 
the word * geography ' in its most pregnant signification ? 
This science, says an American dictionary, is the one 
that ' describes the surface of the earth, with its various 
peoples, animals, and natural products.' 1 Among the 
Germans it is something even more inclusive than that. 
I dare not now expand the definition ; but was not 
Wordsworth in the truest sense a poetical geographer, 
a spiritual interpreter of observed phenomena on the 
earth ? And what else shall we name his less restrained, 
yet noble successor, the author of ' Cloud Beauty' in 
Modern Painters ? 

6. Wordsworth's acquaintance with geography, or with 
one of its main branches, ethnology, enables us, in clos- 
ing, to draw a useful line of demarcation between him 
and his great forerunner in the contemplation of nature, 
the prose-poet and self-taught scientist, Rousseau. Ves- 
tiges of Rousseau's doctrines may no doubt be discerned 
in Wordsworth's poetry to the end of his days. In his 
earlier verse, as M. Legouis makes clear, some of those 
doctrines were more prominent than Wordsworth, if he 
had been conscious of their origin, might have liked to 

1 Standard Dictionary, New York, 1913. 



130 METHODS AND AIMS 

confess. 1 We have already noted a likeness to the edu- 
cational theory of Emile in a passage taken from The 
Prelude? But against one fundamental tenet of Rous- 
seau, a tenet that was accepted in some guise or other 
by nearly every one with whom the young English poet 
came in contact, Wordsworth decisively reacted. The 
fallacy of the ' natural man ' his study of travels in the 
new world immediately showed to be unsound. To assume 
that as we approach more closely to the state of aboriginal 
men we discover a more and more perfect type of human- 
ity, was, he knew, to fly in the face of observed data. He 
was aware what aboriginal tribes were actually like. They 
were in even worse case than the hopeless dwellers in the 
immense complexity of London — that c monstrous ant- 
hill on the plain.' They were by no means superlatively 
good and happy. Such a fallacy could, indeed, maintain 
a foothold only in the brain of a stubborn self-taught 
man like Jean Jacques, who neither knew anything about 
savages at first hand, nor systematically tested his precon- 
ceptions by appealing to authorities. Hence, if Words- 
worth never perhaps came to see that immense cities 
are just as ' natural ' as immense colonies of beavers, 
and just as normal as immense 'hosts of insects,' and 
that complexity of organization is a good or a bad thing, 
not in itself, but according to its fruits, still he ulti- 
mately made no mistake about the character of the 
' natural man.' However, it may be that the violence 
of his disclaimer betrays an original leaning toward the 
error he describes. 

1 The Early Life of Wordsworth, pp. 54 if. 

2 Prelude 3. 427 ff. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 131 

In The Excursion, near the close of Book Third, 
Wordsworth's ' Solitary,' summing up the results of his 
vain search for happiness in America, tells of his final 
hope and final disillusion, in part as follows : 

Let us, then, I said, 
Leave this unknit Republic to the scourge 
Of her own passions ; and to regions haste, 
Whose shades have never felt the encroaching axe, 
Or soil endured a transfer in the mart 
Of dire rapacity. There, Man abides, 
Primeval Nature's child. A creature weak 
In combination, (wherefore else driven back 
So far, and of his old inheritance 
So easily deprived ?) but, for that cause, 
More dignified, and stronger in himself ; 
Whether to act, judge, suffer, or enjoy. 
True, the intelligence of social art 
Hath overpowered his forefathers, and soon 
Will sweep the remnant of his line away ; 
But contemplations, worthier, nobler far 
Than her destructive energies, attend 
His independence, when along the side 
Of Mississippi, or that northern stream 
That spreads into successive seas, he walks ; 
Pleased to perceive his own unshackled life, 
And his innate capacities of soul, 
There imaged : or when, having gained the top 
Of some commanding eminence, which yet 
Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys 
Regions of wood and wide savannah, vast 
Expanse of unappropriated earth, 
With mind that sheds a light on what he sees ; 
Free as the sun, and lonely as the sun, 
Pouring above his head its radiance down 
Upon a living and rejoicing world ! 

So, westward, tow'rd the unviolated woods 
I bent my way ; and, roaming far and wide, 



132 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

Failed not to greet the merry Mocking-bird ; 
And, while the melancholy Muccawiss 
(The sportive bird's companion in the grove) 
Repeated o'er and o'er his plaintive cry, 
I sympathized at leisure with the sound ; 
But that pure archetype of human greatness, 
I foimd him not. There, in his stead, appeared 
A creature, squalid, vengeful, and impure ; 
Remorseless, and submissive to no law 
But superstitious fear, and abject sloth. 
Enough is told ! x 

The ' Solitary ' is not Wordsworth ; he is one of 
Wordsworth's dramatic conceptions ; he speaks in ex- 
treme terms, and at last with bitterness. But his story 
reveals something of Wordsworth's education. 2 



II. MINTO ON ROBERT BURNS 

The old conception of the Ayrshire plowman-poet 
undoubtedly was that his poetry had no historical con- 
nection ; that it stands apart as a unique phenomenon, 
entirely unconnected with the main stream of English 
poetry ; that the peasant-poet owed everything to nature, 
and nothing to books ; that he was a high-priest of 
poetry, without literary father or mother, raised up by 
nature herself ab initio amidst the most disadvantageous 
circumstances, as if to put to shame man's feeble calcu- 
lations of means to ends in literary culture. This was 
the old conception, people finding it difficult to under- 
stand how a plowman could have trained himself to be 

1 Excursion 3.913 ff. 

2 Lane Cooper, A Glance at Wordsworth's Reading, Modern Lan- 
guage Notes 22. 83-89, 110-117. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 133 

a great poet. I do not know how far this conception 
still prevails ; but as something very like it is to be 
found in the famous essay on Burns by another great 
Scotchman of genius, Thomas Carlyle, and as it har- 
monizes with our natural desire to have an element of 
the miraculous in our saints and heroes, it has probably 
survived all the plain facts set forth by the poet's biog- 
graphers. There is in the conception thus much obvious 
truth, that Burns owed little to school, and nothing to 
college ; but when it is said that nature, and nature 
only, was his schoolmaster (unless the word is used in 
a sense sufficiently wide to include the works of man, 
and among them that work of man called literature), 
the theory does injustice to Burns as an artist, and is 
at variance with the plain facts of his life. 

Supreme excellence in poetry is never attained by a 
sudden leap up from the level of common ideas and 
common speech, whether a man's everyday neighbors 
are rustics, or men and women of art and fashion and 
culture. The world in which his imagination moves is 
never entirely of his own creation. The great poet must 
have had pioneers from whom he derived some of the 
ideas and resources of his craft — enough, at least, to 
feed and stimulate and direct his own inborn energy. 
Burns, in truth, was a self-taught genius only in the 
sense in which all great artists are so ; those who see in 
the Ayrshire plowman's master}- of the poetic art any 
rarer miracle than this are those only who attach an 
exaggerated importance to what schools and colleges 
can do in furthering the highest efforts of human genius. 
Beyond a certain point, as we all know, every man must 



134 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

be his own schoolmaster ; in this sense, nature was the 
schoolmaster of Burns. But, all the same, his poetry is 
not an isolated creation, entirely disconnected from the 
main body of literature. It has its own individuality, as 
the work of all great artists must have ; but it had a 
literary origin, as much as the poetry of Chaucer or 
Shakespeare, or even Pope. When nature has done her 
work, and the unexpected has happened, it is generally 
easy to find something very natural in the means she 
has used to bring the unexpected to pass ; and the very 
circumstances that seemed at first sight to be disadvan- 
tageous to Burns are now seen to have favored him in 
the fulfilment of his mission. 

For a work of genius we require first of all a man of 
genius ; but there are conditions that render the exercise 
of his genius possible, and there are influences that mod- 
ify the character and the direction of his work. And, in 
the case of literary work, these conditions and influences 
are generally found in antecedent literature, though not 
necessarily in the literature of the language in which the 
artist works — literature having really an international 
unity. The course of literature is mainly self-contained ; 
and, in reading its history, the impulse to great work 
in one generation may often be traced back to dimly- 
conceived aims and blind and imperfect performances in 
a previous generation. Nature begins her preparations 
for the advent of a great man long before he makes 
his appearance. 

It is interesting, and it strengthens our sense of the 
unity of literature from generation to generation, to trace 
back in this way the movement that culminated in the 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 135 

poetry of Burns to a very humble episode in the English 
poetry of Queen Anne's time — a passing fashion for 
writing what is called pastoral poetry, and a quarrel on 
the subject among the more celebrated wits of the day. 
The fashion had prevailed for some time before in 
France ; in England the starting-point was Dryden's 
translation of Virgil's Eclogues. To this translation was 
prefixed an elegant discourse on pastoral poetry in gen- 
eral by William Walsh, Esq., a gentleman of wit and 
fashion, who wrote in a very neat and pointed style, sub- 
jected the views of the Frenchman, Fontenelle, to deli- 
cate and polite ridicule, and submitted to the public with 
great spirit and elegance his own views of what pastoral 
poetry ought to be. Mr. Walsh's ideal was of the most 
artificial kind, his poetical shepherds being men of a 
golden age, when grazing was the chief industry, and 
shepherds were, as he put it, men of learning and re- 
finement ; and his chief rules being that an air of piety 
should pervade the pastoral poem, that the characters 
should represent the ancient innocent and unpractised 
plainness of the golden age, and that the scenery should 
be truly pastoral — a beautiful landscape, and shepherds, 
with their flocks round them, piping under wide-spread- 
ing beech-trees. Pastoral poetry, as conceived by Mr. 
Walsh, who spoke the taste of his age, was a species of 
elegant trifling, something like the recent fancy for old 
French forms of verse (ballades, rondeaus, villanelles, 
and so forth), and nothing might have come of it ; but 
it so happened that Mr. Walsh was the earliest literary 
friend and counselor of young Mr. Pope, who was per- 
suaded to make his first essay as a poet in pastorals, 



136 METHODS AND AIMS 

written in strict accordance with Walsh's principles ; and 
of that came important consequences. Pope published in 
1709, in a miscellany of Dodsley's ; in the same volume 
appeared also pastorals from the pen of Ambrose Philips. 
Philips, known as ' Namby Pamby,' belonged to the cote- 
rie of Addison and Steele. Between that coterie and 
Pope arose jealousy and strife ; hence, when four years 
later Pope produced his Windsor Forest, there appeared 
in the Guardian, the organ of the coterie (April, 1713, 
is the date), a series of articles on pastoral poetry, in 
which Steele incidentally gave a roll to the log of friend 
Namby Pamby, who was named as the equal of Theoc- 
ritus and Virgil, and ridiculed, by implication, in a 
polite Queen-Anne manner, the pastoral poems of young 
Mr. Pope, without mentioning his name. This at least 
was the construction put upon the matter by Pope, who 
took a clever and amusing revenge of a kind to cause a 
great deal of talk about the Guardian articles. It was 
an amusing literary quarrel ; but Steele's theory of pas- 
toral poetry, thus occasionally produced, had more fruit- 
ful results. The numbers of the Guardian really set 
forth for the first time a fresh theory for that kind of 
composition, to the effect that in English pastoral poetry 
the characters should be not classical shepherds and 
shepherdesses — Corydon and Phyllis, Tityrus and Ama- 
ryllis — but real English rustics ; that the scenery should 
be real English scenery ; and that the manners and 
superstitions should be such as are to be found in 
English rural life. 

Nothing was done to realize this theory in England 
till the time of Crabbe and Wordsworth (Gay merely 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 137 

burlesqued it in his Shepherd's Week), but it so hap- 
pened that it was taken seriously in Scotland. At the 
time when the Guardian articles appeared there was a 
social club in Edinburgh, named The Easy Club, which 
followed the literary movements of London with keen in- 
terest ; and of this club Allan Ramsay was poet laureate. 
Allan also wrote pastoral elegies a la mode, neither bet- 
ter nor worse than the artificial stuff then in fashion ; but 
in a happy hour he thought of trying his hand at the 
real pastoral, as conceived by Steele, and produced The 
Gentle Shepherd. Thus, out of a passing literary fashion 
and a literary quarrel came the original impulse to the 
composition of a work that must be numbered among 
the conditions that made the poetry of Burns possible. 
For no less honor than this can be claimed for Ramsay's 
pastoral comedy. Carlyle says somewhere that a man 
of genius is always impossible until he appears. This is 
quite true, but it is only a half-truth ; and the other half 
is that a man of genius must always be possible before 
he appears. Favorable conditions for the exercise of his 
genius will not produce the man ; but if the favorable 
conditions are not there when he appears, his genius 
will be stifled, and he will remain mute and inglorious. 
Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd became, in the generation 
before Burns, one of the most popular books among the 
peasantry of Scotland, finding a place, it is said, beside 
the Bible in every plowman's cottage and shepherd's 
shieling ; and it may be said to have created the atmos- 
phere in which the genius of Burns thrived and grew 
to such proportions. It did this by idealizing rural life 
in Scotland, by giving the plowman a status in the world 



138 METHODS AND AIMS 

of the imagination. It enabled him, as it were, to hold 
his head higher among his fellow-creatures, and opened 
his eyes to the elements of poetry in his hard, earth- 
stained, and weather-beaten existence. ' His rustic friend,' 
Carlyle says, in speaking of Burns and the boundless 
love that was in him, ' his nut-brown maiden, are no 
longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen, to be 
ranked with the paragons of earth.' But it was Ramsay 
who first threw the golden light of poetry on the peas- 
ant lads and lasses of Scotland, and made heroes and 
heroines of Patie and Roger and Jenny and Peggy, and 
who thus created the atmosphere through which Burns 
saw them. No more striking proof of the power of lit- 
erature to transform life can be given than the fact that 
half a century before the advent of Burns he was pre- 
ceded by an ideal prototype in the Gentle Shepherd. 
Ramsay's description of his hero might pass for a de- 
scription of the real Burns, only that nature asserted her 
supremacy by making the reality more astonishing than 
anything that the imagination of Ramsay, governed as 
it was by the genteel spirit of the time, had dared to 
put into verse. 

Burns owed much to Allan Ramsay, and something 
also to another Scottish poet to whom he erected a me- 
morial stone in Canongate churchyard, Edinburgh — the 
ill-fated Fergusson ; but to say, with Carlyle, that he had 
' for his only standard of beauty the rhymes of Ramsay 
and Fergusson,' is to miss altogether his true relation to 
the main body of English literature. His only standard 
of beauty ! This is indeed to underrate the extent of the 
plowman's self -education. I need hardly remind you of 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 139 

the studious habits of the Burns family, upon which all 
his biographers dwell ; how their severe rule of bodily 
labor was combined with a rule of mental labor, no less 
strictly and strenuously observed because it was volun- 
tary ; how they carried books in their pockets to read 
whenever their hands were free from farm-work ; how 
neighbors found them at their meals with spoon in one 
hand and book in the other. There is nothing, indeed, 
that impresses us more with a sense of the gigantic 
force of the personality of Burns, and the breadth of 
his manhood, than the thought that, with all the strength 
of his youthful passion for reading, tending, as it did, 
to detach him from his unlettered neighbors, it should 
not have converted him into a self-opinionated prig or 
a snarling pedant. What saved him from this fate was 
that he absorbed books, and was not absorbed by them ; 
he was saved, probably, by that craving for distinction, 
of which he spoke more than once as his ruling pas- 
sion, that thirst for admiring sympathy of living men 
and living women which made him appropriate and turn 
to his own uses what he found in books. That, proba- 
bly, saved him from having ' loads of learned lumber in 
his head.' However this may be, the actual result was 
that Burns in those early years of intense and devour- 
ing study, ranging far beyond Ramsay and Fergusson, 
trained himself to be a great artist by mastering and 
rendering to harmonious practice the best critical ideas 
of his century. 

The secret of Burns' enduring and still growing fame 
is, that he was the greatest poetic artist of his century ; 
and I would submit the proposition that he was so, not 



140 • METHODS AND AIMS 

because he stood outside the main current of his cen- 
tury, and drew his inspiration solely from nature, mean- 
ing by nature untutored impulse, but because he took 
into his mind from books, and succeeded, by the force of 
his genius and the happy accident of his position, in rec- 
onciling two elementary principles of poetry that weaker 
intellects cannot keep from drifting into antagonism and 
mutual injury. One of these principles is that with which 
we are familiar in eighteenth-century literature, under the 
name of 'correctness,' which is only another name for 
perfection of expression, in so far as that can be attained 
by laborious self-criticism. When Pope began to write, he 
was advised by his friend Walsh, to whom I have already 
referred, to aim at correctness : the ancients had said every- 
thing, and there was nothing left for the modern poet but 
to improve upon their manner of saying it. In his Essay 
on Criticism, Pope embodied this idea in a couplet : 

True wit is nature to advantage dressed, 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. 

This is one principle ; the other is that art must follow 
nature. It is a common opinion that the eighteenth- 
century poets were alive only to the first of these princi- 
ples. But this will not bear examination ; the sovereignty 
of nature was formally proclaimed by Pope, as well as 
the artistic doctrine of dressing her to advantage : 

First follow nature, and your judgment frame 
By her just standard, which is still the same; 
Unerring nature, still divinely bright, 
One clear, unchanged, and universal light, 
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, 
At once the source, and end, and test of art. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 14 1 

This was Pope's theory, and in the generation between 
Pope and Burns the importance of following nature, and 
the vanity of artificial rules, were insisted on with untiring 
enthusiasm by poets and critics alike. But till Burns 
arose, no poetic aspirant was found, with the doubtful 
exception of Collins, capable of reconciling the conflicting 
claims of nature and art in practice. Gray was stifled by 
too fastidious a desire for correctness ; Thomson, Aken- 
side, Shenstone, and the Wartons had abundant enthusi- 
asm for nature, but insufficient art. It was not, indeed, 
their poetic principles that undid the correct school, it 
was rather the artificial taste, the fear of vulgarity, the 
liking for something elevated above the vulgar style, 
among the audience for which they wrote ; and this led 
them into what was really a violation of Pope's principle 
of aiming at what oft was thought — induced them to 
search for what seldom was thought, and to avoid what 
was never expressed in polite society. Burns was more 
fortunate in his audience, although he worked on the 
same principles, and found both warrant and guidance in 
Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

At first sight it might seem that Burns was all on 
the side of the naturalists : 

Gie me ae touch o' nature's fire, 
That's a' the learning I desire. 

This aspiration is sometimes quoted as if it distinguished 
Burns from his artificial eighteenth-century predecessors, 
and as if it were the secret of his greatness ; but really 
there is nothing singular in it : it might be paralleled 
from every poet and poetaster between Pope and himself. 



142 METHODS AND AIMS 

We are all willing to throw upon nature the labor that 
nature requires from us. It was not the touch of nature's 
fire alone that made Burns the great artist he was ; it was 
the happy combination of this with an indomitable effort 
after perfection of expression. That Burns had natural 
fire there is no question ; everybody feels it in his poetry, 
and everybody allows that the touch of nature's fire is in- 
dispensable. But Burns had courage enough to recognize 
that the possession of natural fire did not absolve him 
from the necessity of resolute artistic discipline ; and his 
distinction lies in this, that he had strength enough to 
undergo the discipline without losing his hold on nature. 
How many of his songs fulfil in substance Pope's ideal — 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed — 

Auld Lang Syne, Ye Banks and Braes, Scots wha hae, 
John Anderson, Tarn Glen, Duncan Gray. And if we 
either look at his poems in relation to the works of his 
predecessors, or study his recorded habits of composition, 
it is easy to see that it was not by trusting to natural im- 
pulse alone that he attained this perfection of expression. 
1 It is an excellent method in a poet,' he says in one of 
his letters, ' and what I believe every poet does, to place 
some favorite classic author, in his walks of study and 
composition, before him as a model.' This was obviously 
his own practice. For almost every one of his poems he 
had a precedent in general form as well as in metre : for 
The Twa Dogs and Tarn o Shanter, Allan Ramsay's 
fables, the Twa Books and The Three Bonnets; for 
H allow e' en, Fergusson's Hallow Fair; for The Cottars 
Saturday Night, Fergusson's Farmers Ingle, and so on. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 143 

Even for his interchange of rhyming epistles with brother- 
bards, which were dashed, as he said, f clean aff loof,' 
he had the precedent of Fergusson's correspondence with 
J. S. It would almost seem as if he never wrote except 
with some precedent in his eye, therein approving himself 
the genuine child of the critical principles and practice of 
Pope. Not, be it remembered, that he kept his precedent 
before him for servile imitation ; it was before his mind 
rather as a stimulating rival, to be beaten on its own 
ground by superior natural force, higher art, or happier 
choice of theme. There is no better way of reviving our 
sense of the force of Burns' genius, if it should happen 
to get blunted by too prolonged familiarity, than putting 
his work alongside the precedent with which it competes. 
He did not waste his strength in searching for new types 
or strange topics ; he tried to improve upon the old. * I 
have no doubt,' he wrote to Dr. Moore (in 1789), 'but 
the knack, the aptitude, to learn the Muses' trade, is a 
gift bestowed by Him "who forms the secret bias of the 
soul " ; but I as firmly believe that excellence in the pro- 
fession is the fruit of industry, labor, attention, and pains.' 
And a description by himself of his habits at the age of 
sixteen gives us some idea of the kind of pains that he 
took, from a very early period, in his self-education to the 
office of poet : ' A collection of English songs was my 
vade-mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or 
walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse ; carefully 
noting the true, tender, or sublime, from affectation or 
fustian.' There we see the artist at work, laboriously 
building up for himself a standard of perfection in expres- 
sion, and boldly applying nature as the test of art. 



144 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

Ten years later, at the age of twenty-six, in the winter 
of 1785, stimulated by the intention of 'appearing in the 
public character of an author,' Burns poured forth poem 
after poem with marvelous rapidity ; and seeing that 
much of his best work was produced then, his easy im- 
petuous speed has been contrasted with the laborious care 
of his eighteenth-century predecessors, and it has been 
supposed that this speed was the secret of his success. 
But those who argue thus forget the long previous years 
of discipline to which the poet, with all his ardor of im- 
agination, had had the strength of will to subject himself. 
In the same way we are apt to marvel at the ease and 
certainty of touch of a rapid painter, and forget the pains 
that it took him to acquire such mastery. There are few 
remains of Burns' apprentice work, because most of it 
was done in his head as he followed the plow or walked 
beside his cart, or strolled or lay in his scanty leisure on 
banks and braes. 

But it is possible sometimes to trace a succession of 
tries with a favorite idea, till at last he found a perfectly 
satisfactory setting for it. The line, 

But seas between us braid hae roared, 

is perfectly balanced in its place in Auld Lang Syne 
against the companion line : 

We twa hae paidl't in the burn. 

But the ocean's roar had done duty in more than one of 
his earlier and less perfect poems before it was happily 
settled in its present connection. At that desperate crisis 
in his life when he proposed to expatriate himself, and 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 145 

took a passage to the West Indies, he addressed the 
following lines to Jean Armour : 

Though mountains rise and deserts howl, 

And oceans roar between, 
Yet dearer than my deathless soul 

Still will I love my Jean. 

We find the same idea in another poem of the same date : 

Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, 

And leave auld Scotia's shore ? 
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, 

Across the Atlantic's roar ? 

The idea occurs in still another poem, also written about 
the same time : 

From thee, Eliza, I must go, 

And from my native shore ; 
The cruel fates between us throw 

A boundless ocean's roar ; 

But boundless oceans, roaring wide, 

Between my love and me, 
They never, never can divide 

My heart and soul from thee. 

I am afraid these quotations illustrate rather more than 
the poet's artistic practice ; but they show at least that he 
was very constant as an artist, if not as a man. 

Burns not only studied his art in books, and measured 
himself against established masters with resolute emula- 
tion and, we may well believe, a glorious joy in his own 
powers, but, living as he did in his youth from morning 
till night, day after day, in a world of the imagination, 
with books for his constant companions, he seems to 
have been influenced by books as few men have been 



146 " METHODS AND AIMS 

in his whole attitude toward life and his leading poetic 
themes. He carried into his daily intercourse with plain 
country-folk, who were his neighbors under the real sky, 
ideals derived from this artificial world ; from it he drew 
his sustenance ; it was the source of the strength that lay 
behind the outward man. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, 
in one of his Familiar Studies of Men and Books, draws 
an artistically harmonious and carefully finished picture 
of Burns as Rab the Ranter, imagining him as a rustic 
Don Juan or an Ayrshire Theophile Gautier. It is re- 
corded that the farmer's son of Lochlea had, when a 
youth of twenty-one, the only tied hair in the parish of 
Tarbolton, and wore a plaid of a particular color, arranged 
in a particular manner round his shoulders. This little 
peculiarity Mr. Stevenson happily interprets as a sign of 
the poet's kinship in temperament with the self-reliant 
artist, who is not averse to public attention, but rather 
wishes to force his personality on the world. The com- 
parison with Gautier is so far happy and suggestive that 
it puts proper emphasis on the artistic side of the poet's 
nature ; it keeps us from forgetting that the Ayrshire 
plowman was, above everything, an artist, and, by force 
of artistic temperament and habit, not a little of a poser. 
Mr. Stevenson's diagnosis of the tied hair and the partic- 
ular plaid, as artistic symptoms, is good, and one could 
wish, in his review of Burns' love affairs and love-letters, 
to have had more of the same happy vein of interpreta- 
tion — to have had more of the artist brought into promi- 
nence and less of the professional Don Juan. But the 
truth is that any comparison of Burns to Don Juan or 
the magnificent leaders of the romantic movement in 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 147 

France is anachronistic, and, so far, misleading. Though 
these had something in common with Burns, they were 
later developments, with marked modifications of race 
and circumstances ; and if we go further back we shall 
find not merely parallels but prototypes, that had a direct 
influence in making Burns what he was. Rab the Ranter, 
the ' rantin' rovin' ' boy that was born of the poet's im- 
agination in Kyle, and was the ' worser spirit ' of his con- 
duct, was the lineal descendant of the roaring boys of the 
Elizabethan time and the swaggering wits and beaux of 
the days of King Charles II ; but his nearest relations 
are to be found in the poetry and fiction that held the 
literary field when Burns was young. Rab the Ranter is 
first cousin to Tom Jones and Roderick Random and 
Charles Surface, and was probably acquainted with his 
relations ; his own immediate parent was, as I have 
already indicated, the hero of Allan Ramsay's pastoral 
comedy, the ' Gentle Sheperd ' Patie, a rattleskull, 

A very deil that aye maun hae his will, 

a king among his fellows by virtue of a natural air of 
superiority, a rhymer and a singer, bold of address, glib 
of tongue, an adept in chaffing the lasses, irresistible in 
his arts of courtship, but, with all this, a student, * reading 
fell books that teach him meikle skill,' familiar with 
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, with poems, histories, and 
plays — f reading, ' as Ramsay says in his homely phrase, — 

Reading such books as raise a peasant's mind 
Above a lord's that is not so inclined. 

All the roaring boys of eighteenth-century poetry and 
fiction are distinguished by a certain goodness of heart, 



148 • METHODS AND AIMS 

and an active scorn of meanness and hypocrisy ; they 
have strong natural affections ; they are full of compunc- 
tion for the victims of their warm-blooded recklessness. 
In short, they are all believers in l Rab's ' ethical creed : 

The heart aye 's the part aye 
That makes us richt or wrang. 

In so far as the poet was a rantin' rovin' Robin, this 
was his literary lineage and consanguinity. But the real 
Burns had a strain in him that would not permit him to 
be a light-hearted roaring boy. Rab the Ranter repre- 
sented only one of his moods — a mood indulged rather 
in a spirit of defiance than with thorough enjoyment, as 
in one to the manner born. Burns was the son of the 
pious cottar whose Saturday night he celebrated, and he 
could not remain long at ease in the Zion of the ranters, 
however heartily he let himself go, and however splendid 
his powers of expression were when he was in the vein. 
He was the author of the addresses To a Mouse and To 
a Mountain Daisy, as well as of Tarn o' Shanter and 
The Jolly Beggars ; he was the ' Man of Feeling,' as well 
as ' Rab the Ranter.' One of his most marked qualities is 
that which Carlyle expresses with such eloquence of admi- 
ration, his large-hearted sensibility, his boundless love of 
mankind, his warm and ready sympathy for poor outcast de- 
fenceless creatures exposed to misfortune's bitter blast, a 
sympathy generous enough to embrace and make allowance 
for even the enemies of the well-conducted animal world — 
the prowling wolf and the devil himself. Herein, also, 
Burns was not singular ; here, also, we find him the poet of 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 149 

in his time. When Burns wrote, sensibility or sentimen- 
tality — tenderness for the woes of the unfortunate, espe- 
cially for sufferings that could not be relieved, or for 
which no relief was possible but a compassionate tear — 
was, and had been for several years, a ruling fashion in 
literature. Sensibility was a favorite virtue in the hero- 
ines, and even in the heroes, of the romances of the time. 
Sterne's Sentimental Joitrney and Mackenzie's Man of 
Feeling still stand out among the numerous contemporary 
writings in the same vein. ' Dear sensibility ! ' cries 
Sterne, ' source inexhausted of all that is precious in our 
joys or costly in our sorrows ! . . . Thou givest a portion 
of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the 
bleakest mountains. He finds the lacerated lamb of an- 
other's flock. This moment I behold him, leaning with 
his head against his crook, with piteous inclination, looking 
down upon it ! " Oh, had I come one moment sooner ! " ' 
Sterne and Mackenzie were favorite authors with Burns ; 
he wore out two copies of The Man of Feeling, carrying 
it about in his pocket to read at odd times. 

But the reader may ask : Am I not reducing Burns, the 
child of nature, the heaven-taught poet, to a mere creature 
of books ? Would the lad that was born in Kyle not have 
been a ' rantin' rovin' ' boy all the same if there had been 
no such character in literature to catch his imagination 
and sway his conduct ? Would he not have been a ' man 
of feeling ' if Sterne and Mackenzie had never written a 
line ? Possibly ; all that I suggest is that, apart from any 
question of what might have been, books did, as a matter 
of fact, influence both his character and his choice of 
poetical themes. The nature, of course, must have been 



150 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

there before he could have been thus influenced, the nat- 
ural affinity with what he absorbed from books, the germ 
that the ' potency of life ' in them, to use Milton's phrase, 
quickened and expanded. That Burns would have felt 
pity for the poor mouse whose dwelling had been ruined 
by his fell plowshare, even if he had been absolutely 
illiterate, we can well believe ; but that he would have 
written a poetic address to the mouse if he had not been 
steeped in the literature of sensibility is open to question. 
I merely afford an illustration of the truth expressed in 
Fletcher of Saltoun's famous saying : ' Let me make the 
ballads of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.' 
Only Fletcher spoke of popular music-hall songs, and the 
remark admits of a much wider application — an applica- 
tion as wide as Milton gave it in his Essay on the Liberty 
of Unlicensed Printing'. K For books are not absolutely 
dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to 
be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are ; 
nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest efricacie and 
extraction of that living intellect that bred them. ... As 
good almost kill a man as kill a good book.' 

I do not mean that Burns owed everything to books. In 
virtue of his artistic temperament, he was peculiarly suscep- 
tible to influences of all kinds — to ideas current in the minds 
of living men, as well as to ideas preserved in books ; but 
books exercised a paramount influence upon him, because, 
as a poet or artist in words, he, more than the generality of 
men, lived and moved and had his being in the atmosphere 
of books. We have his own direct testimony to this, even if 
it was not to be divined from his artistic temperament, and 
the study of his works in relation to his contemporaries. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 15 I 

Take an example or two. We find him at a time when 
things were not going well with him writing as follows to 
his friend, Robert Ainslie : ' Let me quote you my two 
favorite passages, which, though I have repeated them ten 
thousand times, still they rouse my manhood and steel 
my resolution like inspiration : 

On Reason build resolve, 
That column of true majesty in man. — Young 

Here, Alfred, hero of the State, 

Thy genius heavens high will declare ; 

The triumph of the truly great 
Is never, never to despair ! 
Is never to despair! — Thomson, Masque of Alfred 

For many men — most men, perhaps, — such high- 
sounding phrases are hollow and pointless, brass sounds 
and nothing more ; for Burns they obviously had f a 
potency of life.' A letter to Murdoch earlier in his career 
is still more significant of the support he received from 
books, turning poetry to the use that the late Mr. Matthew 
Arnold was never weary of recommending : ' My favorite 
authors are of the sentimental kind, such as Shenstone, 
particularly his Elegies ; Thomson ; Man of Feeling, a 
book I prize next to the Bible; Man of the World', 
Sterne, especially his Sentimental Journey ; Macpherson's 
Ossian, etc. These are the glorious 'models after which I 
endeavor to form my conduct ; and 't is incongruous, 't is 
absurd to suppose that the man whose mind glows with 
sentiments lighted up at their sacred flame — the man 
whose heart distends with benevolence to the whole human 
race, he " who can soar above this little scene of things " 
— can he descend to mind the paltry concerns about 



152 METHODS AND AIMS 

which the terrae-filial race fret and fume and vex them- 
selves ! O how the glorious triumph swells my heart ! I 
forget that I am a poor insignificant devil, unnoticed and 
unknown, stalking up and down fairs and markets, when 
I happen to be in them, reading a page or two of man- 
kind, and "catching the manners living as they rise," 
whilst the men of business jostle me on every side as 
an idle incumbrance in their way.' 

Through that frank letter we can look as through an 
open window into the heart of Burns, as it was at the age 
of twenty-four, and it helps us to understand why he 
failed as a farmer, and why he succeeded as a poet, be- 
cause it shows us how resolutely his heart was set on one 
ambition, and how entirely his mind was occupied with 
the world of the imagination. At that date the ranter 
strain in Burns' character was but very partially de- 
veloped ; we can see that the * man of feeling ' was then 
uppermost ; and we can note, also, the working in his 
mind of another favorite ideal of the time — a favorite 
ideal among artists at all times — that of the spectator, 
the observer, who comes down from his world of dreams 
and meditations to read in the great book of mankind. 

Anything that I have said would lead very far from my 
meaning if it conveyed the impression that Burns neg- 
lected to study either man or nature from the life. My 
theory, if anything so obvious can be dignified with the 
name of theory, only is that it was from literature that 
his genius received the original impulse and bent to that 
study by which literature was so much enriched. His 
poetry is not a mere freak of nature, a thing siri generis, 
but an organic part of the body of English literature, with 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 153 

its attachments or points of connection only slightly dis- 
guised by difference of dialect. It drew its inspiration 
from literature, and it became in its turn a fruitful source 
of inspiration to two great poets of the next generation, 
Wordsworth and Byron. One main secret of Byron's 
fascination was the frank sincerity with which he laid 
bare his own personal feelings to the world, abandoning 
the timid reserve, the polite reticence about self, that had 
been the ruling tradition of the eighteenth century ; and 
it may be doubted whether, with all his impetuous strength 
and defiant pride, Byron would have broken so completely 
with this tradition if Burns had not led the way. It is 
with the ' nobly pensive ' side of Burns, with Burns as 
the f man of feeling, ' that Wordsworth connects himself ; 
and it may be doubted whether Wordsworth would have 
reached the conviction which is the root and source of so 
much of his best work — that 

Nature for all conditions wants not power 
To consecrate, if we have eyes to see 
The outside of her creatures, and to breathe 
Grandeur upon the very humblest face 
Of human life — 

it may be doubted whether Wordsworth would have 
reached this conviction as an inspiring principle of fresh 
poetic work if Burns had not first taught him — to use 
his own words in acknowledging the obligation — 

How verse may build a princely throne 
On humble truth. 

Carlyle, in his celebrated essay on Burns, in which, 
with all its eloquence, he seems to me to speak far too 



154 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

disparagingly of Burns' actual achievement as a poet, re- 
grets that his father's circumstances did not permit him 
to reach the university, and conjectures that he might 
then have l come forth, not as a rustic wonder, but as 
a regular, well-trained intellectual workman, and changed 
the whole course of English literature.' But after all, as 
it was, Burns did something like this. I do not myself 
believe in the possibility of revolutionary changes in liter- 
ature ; the history of literature is the history of a gradual 
development, advancing often, no doubt, by leaps and 
bounds, but always by natural transition from one stage to 
another. I doubt, therefore, whether Burns would have 
1 changed the whole course of English literature ' if he 
had gone to a university ; but, as it was, he exercised an 
important influence on that literature, and it is at least 
probable that he would rather have been hindered with 
than helped in that mission if his education had been 
different from what it was. He might have been a hap- 
pier man otherwise, but it may be doubted whether he 
would have been a greater poet. 1 

1 William Minto, The Historical Relationships of Burns. Literature 
of the Georgian Era, pp. 295-311. By permission of William Blackwood 
and Sons, and of Harper and Brothers. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 1 55 

III. BYRON'S EARLY READING 

[Byron was born January 22, 1788; the list was made Novem- 
ber 30, 1807. As Ruskin says: 'Byron's early power was founded 
on a course of general reading of the masters in every walk of liter- 
ature, such as is, I think, utterly unparalleled in any other young 
life, whether of student or author.' 1 ] 

LIST OF HISTORICAL WRITERS WHOSE WORKS I HAVE 
PERUSED IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES 

History of England. — Hume, Rapin, Henry, Smollet, 2 
Tindal, Belsham, Bisset, Adolphus, Holinshed, Froissart's 
Chronicles (belonging properly to France). 

Scotland. — Buchanan, Hector Boethius, both in the 
Latin. 

Ireland. — Gordon. 

Rome. — Hooke, Decline and Fall by Gibbon, Ancient 
History by Rollin (including an account of the Cartha- 
ginians, etc.), besides Livy, Tacitus, Eutropius, Cornelius 
Nepos, Julius Caesar, Arrian, Sallust. 

Greece. — Mitford's Greece, Leland's Philip, Plutarch, 
Potter's Antiquities, Xenophon, Thucydides, Herodotus. 

France. — Mezeray, Voltaire. 

Spain. — I chiefly derived my knowledge of old Span- 
ish History from a book called the Atlas, now obsolete. 
The modern history, from the intrigues of Alberoni down 
to the Prince of Peace, I learned from its connection with 
European politics. 

Portugal. — From Vertot ; as also his account of the 
Siege of Rhodes — though the last is his own invention, 

1 Praeterita 1.8. 

2 Byron's spelling, etc. (or are they Moore's ?) have been retained. 



156 . METHODS AND AIMS 

the real facts being totally different. — So much for his 
Knights of Malta. 

Turkey. — I have read Knolles, Sir Paul Rycaut, and 
Prince Cantemir, besides a more modern history, anony- 
mous. Of the Ottoman History I know every event, 
from Tangralopi, and afterwards Othman I, to the peace 
of Passarowitz, in 1718, — the battle of Cutzka, in 1739, 
and the treaty between Russia and Turkey in 1790. 

Russia. — Tooke's Life of Catherine II, Voltaire's 
Czar Peter. 

Sweden. — Voltaire's Charles XII, also Norberg's 
Charles XI — in my opinion the best of the two. 
— A translation of Schiller's Thirty Years' War, which 
contains the exploits of Gustavus Adolphus, besides 
Harte's Life of the same Prince. I have somewhere, 
too, read an account of Gustavus Vasa, the deliverer of 
Sweden, but do not remember the author's name. 

Prussia. — I have seen, at least, twenty Lives of Fred- 
erick II, the only prince worth recording in Prussian 
annals. Gillies, his own Works, and Thiebault — none 
very amusing. The last is paltry, but circumstantial. 

Denmark. — I know little of. Of Norway I understand 
the natural history, but not the chronological. 

Germany. — I have read long histories of the house 
of Suabia, Wenceslaus, and, at length, Rodolph of Haps- 
burgh and his thick-lipped Austrian descendants. 

Switzerland. — Ah ! William Tell, and the battle of 
Morgarten, where Burgundy was slain. 

Italy. — Davila, Guicciardini, the Guelphs and Ghibel- 
lines, the battle of Pavia, Massaniello, the revolutions of 
Naples, etc., etc. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 157 

Hindostan. — Orme and Cambridge. 

America. — Robertson, Andrews' American War. 

Africa. — Merely from travels, as Mungo Park, Bruce. 

BIOGRAPHY 

Robertson's Charles V. — Caesar, Sallust (Catiline and 
Jugurtha), Lives of Marlborough and Eugene, Tekeli, 
Bonnard, Buonaparte, all the British Poets, both by 
Johnson and Anderson, Rousseau's Confessions, Life 
of Cromwell, British Plutarch, British Xepos, Camp- 
bell's Lives of the Admirals, Charles XII, Czar Peter, 
Catherine II, Henry Lord Kaimes, Marmontel, Teign- 
mouth's Sir William Jones, Life of Newton, Belisaire, 
with thousands not to be detailed. 

LAW 

Blackstone, Montesquieu. 

PHILOSOPHY 

Paley, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Berkeley, Drummond, 
Beattie, and Bolingbroke. Hobbes I detest. 

GEOGRAPHY 

Strabo, Cellarius, Adams, Pinkerton, and Guthrie. 

POETRY 

All the British Classics as before detailed, with most 
of the living poets, Scott, Southey, etc. — Some French 
in the original, of which the Cid is my favorite. — Little 
Italian. — Greek and Latin without number; — these last 
I shall give up in future. — I have translated a good deal 
from both languages, verse as well as prose. 



158 METHODS AND AIMS 

ELOQUENCE 

Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Sheridan, Austin's 
Chironomia, and Parliamentary Debates from the Revolu- 
tion to the year 1742. 

DIVINITY 

Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker — all very tiresome. I 
abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my 
God, without the blasphemous notions of sectaries, or 
belief in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, 
and Thirty-nine Articles. 

MISCELLANIES 

Spectator, Rambler, World, etc., etc. — Novels by the 
thousand. 

All the books here enumerated I have taken down 
from memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote 
passages from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted 
several in my catalogue ; but the greater part of the above 
I perused before the age of fifteen. 1 

IV. SPENSER'S USE OF BOOKS 

From the essay on Ireland we discover how Spenser 
went about the writing of prose, and while perhaps such 
information scarcely reveals his methods of preparation 
for poetical writing, it is safe to assume that he did not 
take less pains for his chosen type of literature than for 
this type which was of secondary importance to him. It 
was only after careful preliminary work and planning, and 

1 Moore, The Works of Lord Byron, with his Letters and Journals, 
and his Life (London, 1832) 1. 140-144. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 159 

the addition to his own reading of all that he was able to 
learn from the Irish bards and chroniclers, that he ven- 
tured to set down anything. 'Out of them both togither, 
with comparison of times, likewise of manners and cus- 
tomes, affinitye of woordes and names, propertyes of 
natures and uses, resemblances of rytes and ceremonyes, 
monumentes of churches and tombes, and many other like 
circumstaunces,' he gathered what he called ( a likilihood 
of trueth.' If all this labor preceded the production of 
the Irish treatise, is it probable that the Ladie Muses, 
or any other providers of celestial fury, were allowed to 
stand as sole sponsors for the Faerie Queene ? It may be 
said that the prose was in the class of an exact report 
upon political conditions important in Spenser's day and 
to his sovereign, and that hence he was scrupulous to 
prepare himself. But it may be answered that the Faerie 
Qneene was the man's life-work, a work for which he 
prophesied immortality, and for whose perfection no 
labor of brain or hand could have seemed too detailed or 
too onerous. In addition to this reasoning from his evi- 
dent practice on one occasion to his probable method on 
all occasions, there is one more proof to be adduced. In 
one of Spenser's letters to Gabriel Harvey, he speaks 
of his lost, or subsequently recast, poem, Epithalamion 
Thamesis, and convinces us of the care that he took to 
inform himself concerning a subject before he wrote 
about it. In this particular case he had undertaken to 
describe all ' the rivers throughout Englande . . . and 
their righte names and right passage.' It was, he said, a 
work of much labor, but a work in which he found assist- 
ance, because Master Holinshed had made a study of 



160 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

these streams and had ' bestowed singular paines in 
searching oute their firste heades and sources, and also in 
tracing and dogging oute all their course, til they fall 
into the sea.' ' Poetry,' said Wordsworth, 'is the breath 
and finer spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned 
expression which is in the countenance of all Science ' ; 
and as Wordsworth turned for his material to literature, 
to books of travel and natural science, to the best that 
contemporary knowledge offered him, so from this in- 
stance of the rivers we may be sure that Spenser turned 
with the poet's characteristic curiosity and appreciation to 
whatsoever sources of information he found available. 

Before we leave the general subject of the poet's 
method, let us revert to the Irish essay long enough to 
glance at the writers either consulted by Spenser in its 
preparation, or referred to by him in its course. In order 
to discuss the Irish mantle, Spenser has collected infor- 
mation from such various sources as the Bible, Diodorus 
Siculus, Herodotus, ' the Greeke Commentaryes upon 
Calimachus,' and Virgil. Concerning their arms and 
battle array, he has read Olaus Magnus, Buchanan's 
Rerum Scoticarum Historia, Solinus 'and others,' and 
Herodianus * and others.' He refers from memory to 
a passage in Plutarch's Treatise of Homer, and to 
Lucian's ' Sweete dialogue which is intituled Toxaris 
or of frendship.' He has made a thorough study of 
Irish customs and superstitious rites, and here again 
consulted Buchanan. He speaks of Camden's explana- 
tion of an old Scythian legend, and at the close of 
his argument, meant to prove the Scythian descent of the 
Irish, he writes : ' Many such customes I could recount 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 161 

unto you, as of theyr old manner of marrying, of bury- 
ing, of dauncing, of singing, of feasting, of cursing.' It 
reminds one again of Scaliger's poet, who is the creator 
of a second nature, and more particularly of Scaliger's 
paragon, Virgil, who, we are told, talks of the building 
and managing of ships, of wars and cities and laws, 
and is conversant with all the arts and all the sciences ; 
indeed, the poet is primarily the man of understand- 
ing in its scientific, historic, philosophic, almost in its 
divine, sense. But, to continue, Spenser has also read 
the ancient records of Bede ; he has made an etymo- 
logical investigation of British words in use among the 
Irish ; and he has taken note of all that Strabo had 
written concerning the adoption by the Spaniards of the 
letters brought them by the Phoenicians, and of all that 
1 many auncient and authentycal writers ' had said of the 
subsequent carrying of those letters by Spanish Gauls 
into Ireland. Before the essay is done, this Elizabethan 
poet has mentioned specifically something like twenty-five 
sources of information, besides histories and chronicles 
whose authorship is not specified ; he has more than 
once asserted that his discussion is not full, and that 
much remains to be said ; he has indirectly given a 
warning against unquestioning acceptance of the state- 
ments of the Irish bards ; and he has administered a 
rebuke to Stanihurst, who, though a man of learning, 
and of Irish birth, has been lightly 'carryed away with 
old wives tales from approovaunce of his own reason,' 
and who, failing to search into the truth, is led to ground 
gross imaginations upon gross conjectures. Spenser's 
careful investigation of Irish ways and traditions convinces 



162 METHODS AND AIMS 

him of their value as literary data, and their right to 
conscientious treatment. 

1 Indeede, Eudoxus,' he writes, ' you say very true ; for 
alle the customes of the Irish, which I have often noted 
and compared with that I have reade, would minister 
occasion of most ample discourse of the first originall 
of them, and the antiquityes of that people, which in 
trueth I doe thinke to be more auncient then most that I 
knowe in this end of the world ; soe as, yf it were in the 
handling of some man of sound judgement and plentifull 
reading, it would be most pleasaunt and profitable.' * 

And Eudoxus is in agreement, for he declares with 
enthusiasm : ' This ripping up of auncient historyes is 
very pleasing unto me, and indeede savoureth of good 
conceite, and some reading withall.' 2 

All this painstaking preparation resulted, to be sure, in 
a prose tract, but it is the same sort of painstaking prep- 
aration that goes to equip the poet, and is as likely to 
furnish material for an epic or a drama as for a political 
or economic treatise. 

It is not so easy to trace Spenser's studies and exami- 
nation of sources, and his conscious and acknowledged 
debts to literature, in his poems ; however, we can gather 
up a few references of interest. He writes to Sir Walter 
Raleigh that he followed ' all the antique poets histori- 
call ' in the compilation of the Faerie Queene — they turn 
out to be Homer and Virgil ; to them he adds Ariosto 
and Tasso — * by ensample of whiche excellente poets,' 
who fashioned virtuous men, he labors to portray his 
hero, ' perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as 

1 Ireland, p. 624. 2 Ibid., p. 629. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 163 

Aristotle hath devised.' Many times, now directly by 
name, now under the title ' Tityrus, ' he makes grateful 
and admiring references to Chaucer, that ' well of English 
undefyled,' in the footing of whose feet he strives to 
follow. Langland, too, whom he mentions in the epilogue 
to the Shepheardes Calender, must have been much in his 
thought. Finally, we know from the allusions in his 
minor works to contemporary poets that he regarded their 
verse with interest, and, quite simply and modestly, 
thought of himself as one of them, though later ages 
have so unhesitatingly set him higher. 

Though this study cannot consider Spenser's unac- 
knowledged sources, some of the most obvious of them 
may be set down. Aristotle, as indicated above, suggests 
the very framework of the Faerie Queene, throughout 
which, and in the Shepheardes Cale7ider, we trace Virgil, 
Theocritus, Bion, and Lucretius, possibly Homer ; Plato 
inspires the Hymns, while the Visions reveal a copious 
debt to Petrarch and Tasso, and to the French sonneteers. 
. . . Italian and French influences were strong upon 
Spenser. So incomplete an enumeration of sources is of 
little value per se ; it is here included only with the hope 
that it may militate against the all too common tendency 
to underestimate the part that books play in the inspira- 
tion and equipment of great poets. The ill-informed, the 
thoughtless, and those whose enthusiasm springs from 
the admiration of things not necessarily or intrinsically 
admirable, delight too much to say of certain poets : ' They 
owed nothing to books, they drew their material at first 
hand from nature, or from the play of their own imagina- 
tion.' . . . But because Wordsworth had the good fortune 



1 64 METHODS AND AIMS 

to write much in the open air, and because Burns com- 
posed and perfected his verse as he strode behind the 
plow, and because Spenser was possessed of an opulent 
fancy, and wandered brooding and dreaming in * the lond 
of faerie,' let no one suppose that these men had not 
studious habits, and did not eagerly and earnestly make 
acquaintance with literature. 1 

V. SHAKESPEARE'S BOOKS 

It is exceedingly improbable that Shakespeare was the 
owner of a private library of large dimensions. In the 
absence of public libraries in those days, it becomes 
natural to ask where the poet found the volumes he 
required. It has been suggested that the libraries of 
his patron the Earl of Southampton, Jonson, Camden, 
and others were thrown open to him. This is possible, 
though he was not dependent on their generosity. In 
Shakespeare's day each bookseller's shop was a sort 
of public library. Of these shops there was no lack in 
London, especially round about St. Paul's. . . . 

I look upon Shakespeare as the great architect, who, 
gifted with a truly divine talent, gave the materials their 
beautiful shape. The architect can never be made by the 
things ; but he does not make the things, either. The 
materials are given, not created by him ; in so far, he is 
dependent on them. But more than this, his very con- 
ceptions and designs, however original they may be, are 
influenced by previously conceived plans and existent 

1 Ida Langdon, Materials for a Study of Spenser's Theory of Fine 
Art, 191 1, pp. xxviii-xxxiv. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 165 

structures. In brief, originality is not creative production, 
but novel combination. 

All this applies to Shakespeare. However great a 
genius he was, he was dependent on his ' materials.' He 
would never have become what he was, had he lived, 
say, in China from 1564 to 16 16, or in England in the 
times of Hengist and Horsa. As a child of the western 
world, he imbibes with his mother's milk certain ideas 
and modes of thought ; as a child born in England in 
1564, he is the inheritor of a language ready made, of 
all the literature of centuries, and of the culture and art 
of the Island. A heaven-born artist though he was, he 
had to learn much from his predecessors, many of them 
geniuses and men of the first rank. Their lessons he 
did not despise. He studied their writings carefully and 
diligently, until he became a truly well-read man. . . . 

' People,' said Goethe, ' are always talking about orig- 
inality ; but what does that mean ? As soon as we are 
born the world begins to act on us, and this goes on to 
the end. And, after all, what can we call our own except 
energy, strength, and will ? If I could give an account of 
all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, 
there would be but a small balance in my favor. . . . 

' In point of fact, we are all collective beings, do what 
we may ; for how little have we, and are we, that we 
can strictly call our own property ? We must all receive 
and learn both from those who were before us and from 
those who are with us. Even the greatest genius would 
not go far if he willed to draw everything out of his own 
internal self. But many very simple-minded men do not 
comprehend that ; and they grope in darkness for half 



166 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

a life, with their dreams of originality. I have known 
artists who boasted of having followed no master, but 
of being indebted to their own genius for everything. 
Fools ! as if that were possible at all ; and as if the 
world did not force itself upon them at every step, and 
make something of them in spite of their own stupidity. 
... I may speak of myself, and may modestly say what 
I feel. It is true that, in my long life, I have done and 
achieved many things of which I might certainly boast. 
But to speak the honest truth, what had I that was 
properly my own, save the ability to see and hear, to 
distinguish and to select, and to enliven with some wit 
what I had seen and heard, and to reproduce it with 
some degree of skill? I by no means owe my works 
to my own wisdom alone, but to a thousand things and 
persons around me that provided me with material. 
There were fools and sages, minds enlightened and 
narrow, childhood, youth, and mature age — all told me 
what they felt, what they thought, how they lived and 
worked, and what experiences they had gained ; and I 
had nothing further to do than to put out my hand and 
reap what others had sown for me.' . . . 

Many of what are called Shakespeare's sources contain 
the mere embryos of his works. How despicable, for 
example, is The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth in 
comparison with Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth and 
Henry the Fifth ! None the less it is a production of 
perennial interest now, as showing the wonderful transfor- 
mation which the subject received under the great master's 
hands. In other cases Shakespeare follows his source very 
closely. Nothing can be more interesting and instructive 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 167 

than an hour spent in Shakespeare's studio, where we 
can watch him actually at work upon his materials. We 
get into closer touch with him, and we arrive at a better 
understanding. . . . 

What were Shakespeare's chief sources? The answer 
to this question, which I have been frequently asked, is : 
English dramatic works, and the English literature gen- 
erally, inclusive of the popular literary productions, Holin- 
shed in special ; Plutarch ; the Bible ; and Ovid. . . . 

The question regarding the poet's education and 
learning has proved of remarkable attraction from the 
first. The learned Ben Jonson, in his commendatory 
verses prefixed to the First Folio, 1623, said : 

And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek, 

— a verdict which is not devoid of a smack of super- 
ciliousness. That Shakespeare was no match for Ben 
Jonson, as far as knowledge of the ancient classics is 
concerned, goes without saying. But that he had no 
need to be ashamed of his classical attainments we shall 
soon see. For generations, however, it became a standing 
phrase that Shakespeare lacked learning and art. . . . 

Whatever the young genius with the best brains in 
England did in his hours of freedom, he certainly spent 
a great part of the day in the schoolroom. He received 
some mental training there. Of what nature was it, and 
what did he learn there ? What were his school-books ? 

Young Will Shakespeare probably entered the Gram- 
mar School of Stratford in 1570 or 1571, at the age of 
six or seven years. In 1571 Shakespeare's father was 
chief alderman of the town. . . . The boy was therefore 



168 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

of a very respectable Stratford family. There is some 
reason to suppose that he left school about 1578. The 
attendance was free of charge. 

The boy first had to learn reading by aid of the horn- 
book, which consisted of a slab of wood, or other sub- 
stance, in size usually rather less than 5x3 inches, with 
a handle at one end. A printed sheet, containing the 
criss-cross, the alphabet, the vowels, some elements of 
spelling like ab, ba, etc., and the Lord's Prayer, was 
glued down to the wood, and covered by a thin plate of 
transparent horn. . . . The horn-books of about 1570 
were no doubt all in black letter. 

A first reading-book given to the young was the 
'ABC-book,' which contained reading exercises and 
religious matters, with the catechism. The two other 
R's had to be learnt, too, of course. Copy-books had 
been already introduced, to judge from Loves Labor s 
Lost 5. 2. 42 : ' Fair as a text B in a copy-book.' 
Counters, that is to say, round pieces of metal, were 
characteristic aids of earlier days in arithmetical opera- 
tions. Shakespeare alludes to them in several passages, 
notably in Winter s Tale 4. 2. 33 ff., where the Clown 
confesses : ' I cannot do 't without counters.' 

As soon as the boy had mastered the first rudiments, 
which were apparently taught by a pupil-teacher, or 
abecedarms, he was ready for the higher curriculum of 
the grammar school. What the curriculum of a school 
in a smaller town would consist of has been carefully 
studied by the late Professor Thomas Spencer Baynes, 
whose guidance we are safe in following. I shall quote 
his own words, inserting within square brackets a few 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 169 

remarks which are in full harmony with other passages 
in Baynes' paper, and with Lupton and Furnivall's 
list : . . . ' In his first year . . . Shakespeare would be 
occupied with the Accidence and Grammar [namely, 
Lily's Grammar]. In his second year, with the elements 
of grammar, he would read some manual of short phrases 
and familiar dialogues, and these, committed to memory, 
would be colloquially employed in the work of the school 
[some manual like Sententiae Puerile s, Puetiles Confa- 
bidatiunculae, Cordetius Colloquies] ; in his third year, 
if not before, he would take up Cato's Maxims and 
Aesop's Fables ; in his fourth, while continuing the 
Fables, he would read the Eclogues of Mantuanus, parts 
of Ovid, some of Cicero's Epistles, and probably one of 
his shorter treatises ; in his fifth year he would continue 
the reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses, with parts of 
Virgil and Terence ; and in the sixth, Horace, Plautus, 
and probably part of Juvenal and Persius, with some of 
Cicero's Orations and Seneca's Tragedies. In going 
through such a course, unless the teaching at Stratford 
was exceptionally inefficient, the boy must have made 
some progress in several of these authors, and acquired 
sufficient knowledge of the language to read fairly well 
at sight the more popular poets and prose writers such 
as Ovid and Cicero. [The Greek grammar, if any, in use 
at Stratford would most likely be Clenard's Institutiones 
Absolutissimae in Graecam Linguam.] The masters of 
the school during the time Shakespeare attended it would 
seem, however, to have been at least of average attain- 
ments and ability, as they rapidly gained promotion. . . .' 1 

1 H. R. D. Anders, Shakespeare 's Books, pp. xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, 6, 8, 9-1 1. 



i;o METHODS AND AIMS 

VI. AN ILLUSTRATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S 
USE OF BOOKS 

It will readily be granted that on the part of a student, 
as distinguished from the naive and unformed reader, 
no greater mistake can be made than to fancy some 
thought or expression in an English author to be original 
with him, and a sure mark of his particular genius, when 
in point of fact it is not original with him, but comes, 
let us say, through a series of intermediate translations, 
from the Greek of Plutarch. There is a well-known de- 
scription in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra of the 
Egyptian Queen as she first appeared to the hero : 

When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart, 

upon the river of Cydnus . . . 
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 
Burned on the water ; the poop was beaten gold, 
Purple the sails ; and so perfumed, that 
The winds were love-sick with them ; the oars were silver, 
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made 
The water which they beat to follow faster, 
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, 
It beggared all description ; she did lie 
In her pavilion — cloth-of-gold of tissue — 
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see 
The fancy outwork nature ; on each side her 
Stood pretty-dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, 
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem 
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, 
And what they undid did. 1 

Is the description original ? One measure of its origi- 
nality is furnished by the passage in North's Plutarch 
which Shakespeare happens to be adapting : 2 

1 Antony and Cleopatra 2. 2. 191 ff. 

2 Carr, Four Lives from North's Plutarch, pp. 185, 186. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 171 

' When she was sent unto by divers letters . . . she 
. . . mocked Antonius so much that she disdained to 
set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the river 
of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of 
purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in row- 
ing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, 
citherns, viols, and such other instruments as they played 
upon in the barge. And now for the person of herself : 
she was laid under a pavilion of cloth-of-gold of tissue, 
apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus commonly 
drawn in picture ; and hard by her, on either hand of 
her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth 
god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with the which 
they fanned wind upon her.' l 



VII. MILTON'S PLANS AND STUDIES FOR 
PARADISE LOST 

It was in 1639, after his return from his Italian tour, 
in his thirty-first year, that Milton, as he tells us, first 
bethought himself seriously of some great literary work, 
on a scale commensurate with his powers, and which 
posterity should not willingly let die. He had resolved 
that it should be an English poem ; he had resolved that 
it should be an epic ; nay, he had all but resolved — as 
is proved by^his Latin poem to Manso, and his Epitaph- 
ium Damonis — that his subject should be taken from 
the legendary history of Britain, and should include the 
romance of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. 

1 Lane Cooper, Ancient and Modern Letters, in the South Atlantic 
Quarterly, 1 1. 237, 238. 



172 METHODS AND AIMS 

Suddenly, however, this decision was shaken. He be- 
came uncertain whether the dramatic form might not be 
fitter for his purpose than the epic, and, letting go the 
subject of Arthur, he began to look about for other sub- 
jects. The proof exists in the form of a list — written by 
Milton's own hand in 1 640-1 641, or certainly not later 
than 1642, and preserved among the Milton manuscripts 
in Trinity College, Cambridge — of about one hundred 
subjects, many of them Scriptural, and the rest from 
British history, which he had jotted down, with the in- 
tention, apparently, of estimating their relative degrees 
of capability, and at last fixing on the one, or the one 
or two, that should appear best. Now at the head of 
this long list of subjects is Paradise Lost. There are 
no fewer than four separate drafts of this subject as 
then meditated by Milton for dramatic treatment. The 
first draft consists merely of a list of dramatis personae, 
as follows : 

* The Persons : Michael ; Heavenly Love ; Chorus of 
Angels ; Lucifer ; Adam, Eve, with the Serpent ; Con- 
science ; Death ; Labor, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, 
with others, Mutes ; Faith ; Hope ; Charity.' 

This draft having been canceled, another is written 
parallel with it, as follows : 

1 The Persons : Moses [originally written ' Michael or 
Moses,' but the words ' Michael or ' deleted, so as to leave 
' Moses ' as preferable for the drama] ; Justice, Mercy, 
Wisdom ; Heavenly Love ; the Evening Star, Hesperus ; 
Lucifer ; Adam ; Eve ; Conscience ; Labor, Sickness, 
Discontent, Ignorance, Fear, Death, [as] Mutes ; Faith ; 
Hope ; Charity.' 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 173 

This having also been scored out, there follows a third 
draft, more complete, thus : 

K Paradise Lost: The Persons: Moses irpoXoy^et, 
recounting how he assumed his true body ; that it cor- 
rupts not, because of his [being] with God in the mount ; 
declares the like of Enoch and Eliah, besides the purity 
of the place — that certain pure winds, dews, and clouds 
preserve it from corruption ; whence exhorts to the sight 
of God ; tells them they cannot see Adam in the state 
of innocence by reason of their sin. — [Act I] : Justice, 
Mercy, Wisdom, debating what should become of Man if 
he fall. Chorus of Angels sing a hymn of the Creation. 

— Act II : Heavenly Love; Evening Star. Chorus sing 
the marriage song and describe Paradise. — Act III: 
Lucifer contriving Adam's ruin. Chorus fears for Adam 
and relates Lucifer's rebellion and fall. — Act IV : Adam, 
Eve, fallen ; Conscience cites them to God's examina- 
tion. Chorus bewails and tells the good Adam hath lost. 

— Act V : Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, pre- 
sented by an Angel with Labor, Grief, Hatred, Envy, 
War, Famine, Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Igno- 
rance, Fear, [as] Mutes — to whom he gives their names 

— likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest, etc.-; Death entered 
into the world ; Faith, Hope, Charity, comfort and in- 
struct him. Chorus briefly concludes.' 

This is left standing ; but in another part of the manu- 
script, as if written at some interval of time, is a fourth 
draft, as follows : 

'Adam Unparadized : The Angel Gabriel, either de- 
scending or entering — showing, since the globe is cre- 
ated, his frequency as much on Earth as in Heaven 



174 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

— describes Paradise. Next the Chorus, showing the 
reason of his coming — to keep his watch, after Lucifer's 
rebellion, by the command of God — and withal express- 
ing his desire to see and know more concerning this ex- 
cellent and new creature, Man. The Angel Gabriel, as by 
his name signifying a Prince of Power, passes by the 
station of the Chorus, and, desired by them, relates what 
he knew of Man, as the creation of Eve, with their love 
and marriage. — After this, Lucifer appears, after his 
overthrow ; bemoans himself ; seeks revenge upon Man. 
The Chorus prepares resistance at his first approach. At 
last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he departs ; 
whereat the Chorus sing of the battle and victory in 
Heaven against him and his accomplices, as before, after 
the first Act, was sung a hymn of the Creation. — Here 
again may appear Lucifer, relating and consulting on what 
he had done to the destruction of Man. Man next and 
Eve, having been by this time seduced by the Serpent, 
appear confusedly, covered with leaves. Conscience, in a 
shape, accuses him ; Justice cites him to the place whither 
Jehovah called for him. In the meantime the Chorus 
entertains the stage and is informed by some Angel of 
the manner of the Fall. Here the Chorus bewails Adam's 
fall. — Adam and Eve return and accuse one another ; 
but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife — is stub- 
born in his offence. Justice appears, reasons with him, 
convinces him. The Chorus admonishes Adam, and bids 
him beware Lucifer's example of impenitence. — The 
Angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise ; but, be- 
fore, causes to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a masque 
of all the evils of this life and world. He is humbled, 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 175 

relents, despairs. At last appears Mercy, comforts him, 
promises him the Messiah ; then calls in Faith, Hope, 
Charity ; instructs him. He repents, gives God the glory, 
submits to his penalty. The Chorus briefly concludes. — 
Compare this with the former Draft.' 

These schemes of a possible drama on the subject of 
Paradise Lost were written out by Milton as early as 
between 1639 and 1642, or between his thirty-first and 
his thirty-fourth year, as a portion of a list of about a hun- 
dred subjects which occurred to him, in the course of his 
reading at that time, as worth considering for the great 
English poem which he hoped to give to the world. 
From the place and the proportion of space which they 
occupy in the list, it is apparent that the subject of Para- 
dise Lost had then fascinated him more strongly than any 
of the others, and that, if his notion of an epic on Arthur 
was then given up, a drama on Paradise Lost had oc- 
curred to him as the most likely substitute. It is also 
more probable than not that he then knew of previous 
dramas that had been written on the subject, and that in 
writing out his own schemes he had the schemes of 
some of these dramas in his mind. Vondel's play was 
not then in existence ; but Andreini's was. Farther, 
there is evidence in Milton's prose pamphlets published 
about this time that, if he did ultimately fix on the sub- 
ject he had so particularly been meditating, he was likely 
enough to make himself acquainted with any previous 
efforts on the same subject, and to turn them to account 
for whatever they might be worth. . . . 

Whether the time spent by Milton in the composition 
of Paradise Lost was five years (16 5 8-1 66 3), or seven or 



176 * METHODS AND AIMS 

eight years (165 8- 1665), it is certain that he bestowed on 
the work all that care and labor which, on his first con- 
templation of such a work in his earlier manhood, he had 
declared would be necessary. The l industrious and select 
reading,' which he had then spoken of as one of the 
many requisites, had not been omitted. Whatever else 
Paradise Lost may be, it is certainly one of the most 
learned poems in the world. In thinking of it in this 
character we are to remember, first of all, that, ere his 
blindness had befallen him (1652), Milton's mind was 
stored with an amount of various and exact learning such 
as few other men of his age possessed ; so that, had he 
ceased then to acquire more, he would have still carried 
in his memory an enormous resource of material out of 
which to build up the body of his poem. But he did not, 
after his blindness, cease to add to his knowledge by 
reading. At the very time when he was engaged on his 
Paradise Lost, he had, as his nephew Phillips informs us, 
several other great undertakings in progress of a different 
character, for which daily reading and research were nec- 
essary, even if they could have been dispensed with for 
the poem — to wit, the construction of a Body of Divinity 
from the Scriptures, the completion of a History of Eng- 
land, and the collection of materials for a Thesaurus, or 
Dictionary, of the Latin tongue. Laboriously every day, 
with a due division of his time from early morning, he 
pursued these tasks, by a systematic use of assistants 
whom he kept about him. . . . 

It would not be difficult to prove, at any rate, that, 
among the ' select readings ' engaged in specially for the 
purposes of Paradise Lost while it was in progress, must 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 17 7 

have been readings in certain books of geography and 
Eastern travel, and in certain Rabbinical, early Christian, 
and mediaeval commentators on the subjects of Paradise, 
the Angels, and the Fall. Nothing is more striking in 
the poem, nothing more touching, than the frequency, 
and, on the whole, wonderful accuracy, of its refer- 
ences to maps ; and, whatever wealth of geographical 
information Milton may have carried with him into his 
blindness, there are evidences, I think, that he must have 
refreshed his recollections of this kind by the eyes of 
others, and perhaps by their guidance of his finger, after 
his sight was gone. In short, for the Paradise Lost, as 
well as for the prose labors carried along with it, there 
must have been abundance of reading ; and, remembering 
to what a stock of prior learning, possessed before his 
blindness, all such increments were added, we need have 
no wonder at the appearance now presented by the poem. 
To say merely that it is a most learned poem — the poem 
of a mind full of miscellaneous lore wherewith its grand 
imagination might work — is not enough. Original as it 
is, original in its entire conception, and in every portion 
and passage, the poem is yet full of flakes — we can 
express it no otherwise — full of flakes from all that is 
greatest in preceding literature, ancient or modern. This 
is what all the commentators have observed, and what 
their labors in collecting parallel passages from other poets 
and prose- writers have served more and more to illustrate. 
Such labors have been overdone ; but they have proved 
incontestably the tenacity of Milton's memory. In the 
first place, Paradise Lost is permeated from beginning 
to end with citations from the Bible. Milton must have 



178 ' METHODS AND AIMS 

almost had the Bible by heart ; and besides that some 
passages of his poem, where he is keeping close to the 
Bible as his authority, are avowedly coagulations of Scrip- 
tural texts, it is possible again and again, throughout the 
rest, to detect the flash, through his noblest language, of 
some suggestion from the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gos- 
pels, or the Apocalypse. So, though in a less degree, with 
Homer, the Greek tragedians (Euripides was a special 
favorite of his), Plato, Demosthenes, and the Greek classics 
generally, and with Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, 
Ovid, Juvenal, Persius, and the other Latins. So with the 
Italian writers whom he knew so well — Dante, Petrarch, 
Ariosto, Tasso, and others now less remembered. So with 
modern Latinists of various European countries, still less 
recoverable. Finally, so with the whole series of preced- 
ing English poets, particularly Spenser, Shakespeare, and 
some of the minor Spenserians of the reigns of James 
and Charles I, not forgetting that uncouth popular favor- 
ite of his boyhood, Sylvester's Du Bartas. In connection 
with all which, or with any particularly striking instance 
of the use by Milton of a thought or a phrase from pre- 
vious authors, let the reader remember his own definition 
of plagiarism, given in his WacovoKXaarr]^ . ' Such kind 
of borrowing as this,' he there says, ' if it be not bettered 
by the borrozver, among good authors is accounted pla- 
giary/ — And again, of quotations from the Bible : ' It is 
not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hands to 
borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance ; but to 
make them his own is a work of grace only from above.' 1 

1 Masson, The Poetical Works of John Milton (Globe Edition), Intro- 
duction, pp. 11-17. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 179 

VIII. MILTON'S ACCOUNT OF HIS OWN 
EDUCATION 

My father destined me from a child to the pursuits of 
literature ; and my appetite for knowledge was so vora- 
cious that, from twelve years of age, I hardly ever left my 
studies, or went to bed before midnight. This primarily 
led to my loss of sight. My eyes were naturally weak, 
and I was subject to frequent headaches ; which, however, 
could not chill the ardor of my curiosity, or retard the 
progress of my improvement. My father had me daily 
instructed in the grammar school, and by other masters 
at home. He then, after I had acquired a proficiency in 
various languages, and had made a considerable progress 
in philosophy, sent me to the University of Cambridge. 
Here I passed seven years in the usual course of instruc- 
tion and study, with the approbation of the good, and 
without any stain upon my character, till I took the degree 
of Master of Arts. After this, I did not, as this miscreant 
feigns, run away into Italy, but of my own accord retired 
to my father's house, whither I was accompanied by the 
regrets of most of the Fellows of the college, who showed 
me no common marks of friendship and esteem. On my 
father's estate, where he had determined to pass the re- 
mainder of his days, I enjoyed an interval of uninterrupted 
leisure, which I entirely devoted to the perusal of the Greek 
and Latin classics ; though I occasionally visited the 
metropolis, either for the sake of purchasing books or of 
learning something new in mathematics or music, in which 
I at that time found a source of pleasure and amusement. 
In this manner I spent five years till my mother's death. 



180 v METHODS AND AIMS 

I then became anxious to visit foreign parts, and par- 
ticularly Italy. . . . Taking ship at Nice, I arrived at 
Genoa, and afterwards visited Leghorn, Pisa, and Flor- 
ence. In the latter city, which I have always more partic- 
ularly esteemed for the elegance of its dialect, its genius, 
and its taste, I stopped about two months ; when I con- 
tracted an intimacy with many persons of rank and learn- 
ing, and was a constant attendant at their literary parties 
— a practice which prevails there, and tends so much to 
the diffusion of knowledge and the preservation of friend- 
ship. . . . When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily 
and Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received 
of the civil commotions in England made me alter my 
purpose. ... By the favor of God, I got safe back to 
Florence, where I was received with as much affection as 
if I had returned to my native country. There I stopped 
as many months as I had done before, except that I 
made an excursion for a few days to Lucca; and, cross- 
ing the Apennines, passed through Bologna and Ferrara 
to Venice. After I had spent a month in surveying the 
curiosities of this city, and had put on board a ship the 
books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded through 
Verona and Milan, and along the Leman Lake to Geneva. 
... At Geneva I held daily conferences with John Dio- 
dati, the learned Professor of Theology. Then pursuing 
my former route through France, I returned to my native 
country, after an absence of one year and about three 
months. . . .As soon as I was able, I hired a spacious 
house in the city for myself and my books, where I again 
with rapture renewed my literary pursuits. 1 

1 Second Defense. Prose Works (Bohn Edition) I. 254 ff. 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 181 

I would be heard only, if it might be, by the elegant 
and learned reader, to whom principally for a while I 
shall beg leave I may address myself. To him it will be 
no new thing though I tell him that, if I hunted after 
praise by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should not 
write thus out of mine own season, when I have neither 
yet completed to my mind the full circle of my private 
studies — although I complain not of any insufficiency 
to the matter in hand ; or, were I ready to my wishes, it 
were a folly to commit anything elaborately composed to 
the careless and interrupted listening of these tumultuous 
times. Next, if I were wise only to my own ends, I would 
certainly take such a subject as of itself might catch 
applause (whereas this hath all the disadvantages on the 
contrary), and such a subject as the publishing whereof 
might be delayed at pleasure, and time enough to pencil 
it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the 
perfection of a faultless picture ; whenas in this argument 
the not deferring is of great moment to the good speed- 
ing, that, if solidity have leisure to do her office, art can- 
not have much. ... I must say, therefore, that, after I 
had for my first years by the ceaseless diligence and care 
of my father (whom God recompense !) been exercised to 
the tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, 
by sundry masters and teachers both at home and at the 
schools, it was found that, whether aught was imposed 
me by them that had the overlooking or betaken to of 
mine own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or 
versing — but chiefly this latter, — the style, by certain 
vital signs it had, was likely to live. But much latelier 
in the private Academies of Italy, whither I was favored 



1 82 METHODS AND AIMS 

to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had in 
memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout (for the 
manner is that every one must give some proof of his 
wit and reading there), met with acceptance above what 
was looked for ; and other things, which I had shifted in 
scarcity of books and conveniences to patch up amongst 
them, were received with written encomiums, which the 
Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side 
the Alps ; I began thus far to assent both to them and 
divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an 
inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by 
labor and intense study (which I take to be my portion 
in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I 
might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, 
as they should not willingly let it die. . . . 

The thing which I had to say, and those intentions 
which have lived within me ever since I could conceive 
myself anything worth to my country, I return to crave 
excuse that urgent reason hath plucked from me, by an 
abortive and foredated discovery. And the accomplish- 
ment of them lies not but in a power above man's to 
promise ; but that none hath by more studious ways en- 
deavored, and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, 
that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and free 
leisure will extend. . . . Neither do I think it shame to 
covenant with any knowing reader that for some few 
years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment 
of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be 
raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine — 
like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vul- 
gar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite ; 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 183 

nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Mem- 
ory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that 
Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and 
knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed 
fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he 
pleases. To this must be added industrious and select 
reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and 
generous arts and affairs ; till which in some measure be 
compassed, at mine own peril and cost I refuse not to 
sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to 
hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I 
can give them. Although it nothing content me to have 
disclosed thus much beforehand, but that I trust hereby 
to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure 
to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and 
leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful 
and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of 
noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright 
countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of de- 
lightful studies, to come into the dim reflection of hol- 
low antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and there be 
fain to club quotations with men whose learning and 
belief lies in marginal stuffings. . . . Let any gentle 
apprehension, that can distinguish learned pains from 
unlearned drudgery, imagine what pleasure or profound- 
ness can be in this. . . } 

I had my time, readers, as others have who have good 
learning bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places 
where the opinion was it might be soonest attained ; and, 

1 The Reason of Chzirch Government urged against Prelaty. Prose 
Works 2. 476 ff. 



1 84 METHODS AND AIMS 

as the manner is, was not unstudied in those authors 
which are most commended. Whereof some were grave 
orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved 
indeed — but, as my age then was, so I understood them ; 
others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the schools 
are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of their 
numerous writing (which in imitation I found most easy, 
and most agreeable to nature's part in me), and for their 
matter (which what it is there be few who know not), I 
was so allured to read that no recreation came to me 
better welcome. . . . Whence having observed them to 
account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were 
ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem them- 
selves worthiest to love, those high perfections which under 
one or other name they took to celebrate ; I thought with 
myself by every instinct and presage of nature (which is 
not wont to be false) that what emboldened them to this 
task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden 
me. . . . 

For, by the firm settling of these persuasions, I became, 
to my best memory, so much a proficient that, if I found 
those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of them- 
selves, or unchaste of those names which before they had 
extolled, this effect it wrought with me : from that time 
forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored, 
and above them all preferred the two famous renowners 
of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honor of them 
to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and 
pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not 
after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who 
would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter 



ON THE STUDIES OF POETS 185 

in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem — 
that is, a composition and pattern of the best and hon- 
orablest things ; not presuming to sing high praises of 
heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself 
the experience and the practice of all that which is 
praiseworthy. . . . 

Next (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye 
whither my younger feet wandered, I betook me among 
those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn 
cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious 
kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christen- 
dom. There I read it in the oath of every knight that he 
should defend, to the expense of his best blood, or of his 
life, if it so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin 
or matron ; from whence even then I learned what a 
noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of 
which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of 
themselves, had sworn. . . . 

Thus, from the laureat fraternity of poets, riper years 
and the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to 
the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine 
volumes of Plato, and his equal, Xenophon ; where if I 
should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love — I mean 
that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, 
which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy 
(the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion which 
a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about) 
— and how the first and chief est office of love begins and 
ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine 
generation, knowledge and virtue ; with such abstracted 
sublimities as these it might be worth your listening, 



1 86 METHODS AND AIMS 

readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a still time, 
when there shall be no chiding. . . . 

Last of all, not in time, but as perfection is last, that 
care was ever had of me, with my earliest capacity, not to 
be negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian 
religion. 1 

1 An Apology for Smectymnuns. Prose Works 3. n6ff. 



VI 

METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE — 
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 

I. BROWNING 

I have gone the whole round of creation : I saw and I 

spoke ! 
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my 

brain 
And pronounced on the rest of His handwork — returned 

Him again 
His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as I saw. 
I report, as a man may of God's work — all 's love, yet 

all 's law ! 1 

II. THE METHOD OF THE TROUBADOURS 

In his journey through purgatory Dante met Guido 
Guinicelli, and began to extol the ' sweet ditties ' that he 
composed. But Guinicelli disclaimed the honor, pointed 
out another as the master who excelled all, and humbly 
effacing himself before this greatest of poets, disappeared 
' through the fire, even as through the water a fish going 
to the bottom.' It would hardly seem possible for Dante 
to introduce this poet with more signal distinction ; but 

1 Saul 17. 1-5. 
187 



1 88 METHODS AND AIMS 

he found a way — allowing him to speak, not in Tuscan, 
but in his own language : ' I am Arnaut, who weep and 
go singing.' Who was this poet ? His full name was 
Arnaut Daniel. He was a troubadour. . . . 

Dante himself bears witness that Daniel was not pop- 
ular. ... It astonishes us to hear Petrarch call him 
' First among all, . . . great master of love, who still 
does honor to his country with his novel and beautiful 
diction.' We wonder still more at Dante's admiration, 
and the tradition of reverence that continued down even 
to Tasso's day. . . . 

Daniel's passion for * rich rhymes ' and the obscure 
style was not mere affectation, mere striving for novelty. 
His mind was naturally reserved and self-contained, not 
easy and effusive. l He that would earn praise must 
govern himself,' he sang; and again: ' Love bridles my 
mouth.' . . . Such a man was not likely to be satisfied 
with a ready, flowing style. Besides, he was nobly born 
and well educated, and naive poetry was too simple for 
him. He knew and felt the power of words. Not con- 
tent with the purest form of the troubadour tongue — 
his mother-speech — he winnowed and elaborated it. . . . 

All these are the marks of an artistic poet. ... He 
distinguished himself by carrying such thoughts, feelings, 
and imaginations as were his to their ultimate develop- 
ment, and expressing them with a unique force. Others 
personified love, but he made love speak, and even act, 
as a living person. While others declared that love en- 
abled them to be joyous even when the earth was dark 
and gloomy, he seemed intent upon detaching himself 
altogether from nature and dominating it. While others 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 189 

used the antithesis of word and phrase, he made it a 
fundamental element of his verse and of his thought. 

Others had been rich in the variety of their rhymes, 
but he surpassed them all. To secure striking effects he 
ran the whole vocal gamut of vowels and consonants, 
and even studied to obtain haunting chords by employing 
almost-rhymes. Others . . . carried rhymes from stanza 
on to stanza ; but he, to avoid commonplaces and secure 
more delicate results, made the rhyme within the stanza 
entirely subordinate. Look for a moment at [a particular 
example]. Out of seventeen lines only seven are capped 
in the same stanza ; for answers to the rest the ear must 
wait and listen, until the corresponding line is reached 
in each of the six stanzas that follow. 

This principle was carried to its ultimate in his sestine 
— that proof -piece of his wonderful skill in form — which 
was imitated by Dante, Petrarch, and many others. In 
this he completely discarded the rhyme of the stanza, 
and relied upon the assonances of his terminal words . . . 
and the subtle musical effect of their recurrence in a 
surprising but regular order. . . . 

His refinements in metre and rhyme must have had 
real effect or he would not have employed them. . . . 
It seems to me clear that Daniel addressed ears more 
delicate and tenacious than ours. His verse was like the 
'music of calculation.' It was like those exquisite vases 
which ravish our cultured vision precisely because their 
curves are so refined, so slight. It was like a violin air of 
Bach's compared with a thumping rhythm for the banjo. 
It was like the harmony of Chopin's scattered chords 
contrasted with the obvious chiming of a choral. . . . 



190 METHODS AND AIMS 

Riberac, the place where Arnaut Daniel — the master 
of technical verse — was born, is not far away. Let us 
take flight in that direction, and on the way change our 
thoughts by discussing what Daniel reminds us of — the 
art of the troubadours. . . . 

On the side of form . . . they labored intensely at their 
art. Addressing as they did the most cultivated class of 
society, they would not have been pardoned for care- 
lessness of manner ; and finish was the more essential 
because their art, sprung from a popular source, yet appeal- 
ing to a culture that was bent upon eliminating every 
trace of boorishness, needed to assume a style no less 
distinguished than the courtly bearing of its patrons. 
For these reasons, and for others, form became an essen- 
tial feature of Provencal verse, and some knowledge of 
its technique is both valuable and interesting. 

Of course there were no schools or professors of 
poetics for the education of troubadours. The chivalric, 
self-sacrificing spirit of the time disposed their hearts 
vaguely toward passionate devotion, love supplied the 
impulse to sing, and a friendly poet was very likely 
among the aspirant's acquaintances to give advice and 
criticism ; but their real instruction was the imitation of 
approved and favorite songs, which worked in their 
minds as the ancient lyrics of Scotland worked in the 
thoughts of plowman Burns. During the whole creative 
period this was all : theories, principles, and rules did not 
exist in any systematic form. But about the time Dante's 
life was closing, the usages of poetical writing were com- 
piled under the auspices of the College of the Gay Sci- 
ence at Toulouse ; and from this treatise, entitled Las Leys 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 191 

Damors (The Laws of Love), and from the works of the 
masters, we can learn the principles of troubadour art. . . . 

The chief originality, and the great artistic triumph, of 
the Provencal poets lay in the construction of the stanza. 
The popular poetry had bound together two or more lines 
of the same kind in longer or shorter stanzas, each of 
which was logically complete ; but the troubadour, gain- 
ing a truer simplicity through an apparent complexity, 
united lines of every sort in stanzas of any number of 
lines from three to forty-two, and carried the sense along 
from the beginning to the end of the piece. 

It was rhyme that bound the lines together, of course ; 
and that is why the troubadours accomplished so much for 
the stanza. To be sure, they did not invent rhyme. The 
germ of it has been found ... in the assonances and 
alliterations of Roman rhetoric, and before their time it 
had been employed in Latin verse ; but they seized upon 
rhyme with a new vigor, and made it serve them as it 
has served no other poets. . . . 

With perfect freedom as to the number of lines in a 
stanza, the length of the lines, the kinds of rhyme, and 
the disposal of the rhymes, it was possible to devise an 
almost infinite variety of stanza-forms. Naturally, certain 
forms became standard, but every poet was at liberty to 
contrive new ones. In fact, he was expected to show his 
talent in precisely this way, and theoretically every song 
was to have a pattern of its own. The result was an 
unbounded luxuriance of ingenious forms. The Laws of 
Love describe thirty-four different ways of rhyming, each 
with a name of its own, and seventy-two kinds of stanzas, 
all of them labeled in a similar way ; but this was only 



192 METHODS AND AIMS 

a beginning, and Maus has counted up 817 distinct pat- 
terns in the works of the troubadours. The abundance of 
rhymes in Provencal contributed no little to stimulate this 
variety : Peire de Corbiac, for instance, could invent 840 
lines ending with the same sound. 

But rhyme did only half its work in binding lines 
together ; it also brought the stanzas into one. . . . Occa- 
sionally when the stanza was very long, or when all the 
lines of it rhymed together, as in Sordel's Lament, each 
stanza had its own rhymes. Occasionally stanzas were 
grouped in twos or threes, and each group had new 
rhymes. But the grand rule was that all, or at least a 
number of the rhymes, were carried through the piece, 
and no other poets have followed out this principle of 
unity so completely as the troubadours. Frequently, as 
we have discovered, a line was not capped at all in its 
own stanza, but found its answer at the same point in the 
other stanzas ; and this hide and seek of the rhymes was 
no doubt a very pleasant feature of the art in Provencal 
ears. One rule was absolute : the pattern might be any- 
thing, but, once adopted, it must be followed to the end, 
and all the stanzas made precisely alike. 

There were still other ways to give an impression of 
unity. Sometimes the ends of lines that did not rhyme 
together had a certain similarity of sound — for example : 
-ars, -ors, -urs, -aire, -ars, -ors, -ers, -aire. Sometimes 
there was a refrain — perhaps only a single word — 
repeated at the end, or in the middle, or even at the 
beginning of each stanza. Sometimes the last rhyme of 
a stanza became the first of the succeeding stanza, or 
the last word or line of one stanza opened the next, or 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 193 

the rhymes of the second half of a stanza were used 
in the first half of the following one. It is useless to 
enumerate such devices, for the variety was endless. 

Was it worth while ? 

Certainly the rhymes assisted the singer to remember 
his lines, and no doubt they were also an aid to the poet. 
The very difficulty of them improved his work, for it was 
a challenge and a spur to his powers. Besides, rhyme is 
a mode of thinking, as metre is. The true rhetorician 
does not think first and then clothe his ideas with figur- 
ative language — he thinks in figures ; and in a similar 
way the real verse-maker finds rhyme and metre, not 
obstacles to be overcome, but wings to bear him up. The 
listener, too, was not without a profit. Rhyme is an 
appeal to both recollection and anticipation. It recalls a 
past pleasure, and suggests that a pleasure is approaching ; 
and the regular though infinitely varied recurrences of 
pleasant sounds, running entirely through a Provencal 
song, leave in one's ear the charm of distant music, faint 
but real, fugitive but haunting. 

A merit equally rational may by found in almost all of 
the troubadours' devices. However ingenious the pattern, 
all the chief poets were agreed that no technical skill was 
of any value unless it had feeling behind it ; and we may 
fairly look upon the intricacies of the best Provencal verse 
as not in any way akin to the spiritless artificiality of acros- 
tics and the like, but as the natural embroidery of branch 
and leaf, instinct with life and the vernal spirit, forced 
sometimes, but never falsified by hot-house conditions. . . . 

By the rule — not always followed — every stanza 
broke into two parts at a strong pause called the volta, 



194 METHODS AND AIMS 

and then one or the other of these parts broke again into 
exact halves, sung to the same strain of music, so that 
the stanza had three sections. In a similar way, as it is 
held, the song as a whole was intended to show a three- 
fold partition of stanzas. This, indeed, was of minor 
importance, but the division of the stanza was a funda- 
mental principle. From Provence it passed on to Italy, 
and Dante expounded it with great emphasis and clear- 
ness. England imported it from Italy in the sonnet, and 
so our own poets fall back now and then upon the art 
of the troubadours. . . . 

It is not rare to find them speaking of the labor 
expended on their verse. With one it was * building ' a 
song ; with another it was ' forging ' ; with a third it was 
' working out.' They often confessed the pains taken to 
refine their pieces. Daniel and others used the * file.' 
At length every word lay precisely as the poet wished, 
and all were so deftly fitted together that a joglar could 
hardly change one without conscious effort. And then — 
perhaps with an injunction to alter nothing — the finished 
work was published through the joglars, and set going 
from castle to castle and from lip to lip. 1 

1 Justin H. Smith, The Troubadours at Home I. 188 ff.; 2. 283 ff. By 
permission. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 195 

III. A METHOD OF STUDY SUGGESTED BY 
THE PRACTICE OF DANTE 

It were a shameful thing if one should rhyme under 
the semblance of metaphor or rhetorical similitude, and 
afterwards, being questioned thereof, should be unable to 
rid his words of such semblance, unto their right under- 
standing. Of whom (to wit, of such as rhyme thus 
foolishly) myself and the first among my friends do 
know many. 1 

I, thinking that ... it were well to say somewhat of 
the nature of Love, and also in accordance with my 
friend's desire, proposed to myself to write certain words 
in the which I should treat of this argument. And the 
sonnet that I then made is this : 

Love and the gentle heart are one same thing, 
Even as the wise man in his ditty saith : 
Each, of itself, would be such life in death 

As rational soul bereft of reasoning. 

' T is Nature makes them when she loves : a king 
Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth 
Is called the Heart ; there draws he quiet breath 

At first, with brief or longer slumbering. 

Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind 

Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart 
Send the desiring of the eyes again ; 

Where often it abides so long enshrined 

That Love at length out of his sleep will start. 
And women feel the same for worthy men. 

This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first, 
I speak of him according to his power. In the second, 

1 Dante, TTie New Life (tr. Rossetti), p. 73. 



196 METHODS AND AIMS 

I speak of him according as his power translates itself into 
act. The second part begins here : * Then beauty seen.' 
The first is divided into two. In the first, I say in what 
subject this power exists. In the second, I say how this 
subject and this power are produced together, and how the 
one regards the other, as form does matter. The second 
begins here: 'Tis Nature.' Afterwards when I say, 
' Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind,' I say how 
this power translates itself into act ; and, first, how it so 
translates itself in a man, then how it so translates itself 
in a woman ; here : ' And women feel.' 

Having treated of love in the foregoing, it appeared to 
me that I should also say something in praise of my 
lady, wherein it might be set forth how love manifested 
itself when produced by her ; and how not only she could 
awaken it where it slept, but where it was not she could 
marvelously create it. To the which end I wrote another 
sonnet ; and it is this : 

My lady carries love within her eyes ; 

All that she looks on is made pleasanter ; 

Upon her path men turn to gaze at her ; 
He whom she greeteth feels his heart to rise, 
And droops his troubled visage, full of sighs, 

And of his evil heart is then aware : 

Hate loves, and pride becomes a worshiper. 
O women, help to praise her in some wise. 
Humbleness, and the hope that hopeth well, 

By speech of hers into the mind are brought, 
And who beholds is blessed oftenwhiles. 
The look she hath when she a little smiles 

Cannot be said, nor holden in the thought ; 
'Tis such a new and gracious miracle. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 197 

This sonnet has three sections. In the first, I say how 
this lady brings this power into action by those most 
noble features, her eyes ; and, in the third, I say this same 
as to that most noble feature, her mouth. And between 
these two sections is a little section, which asks, as it 
were, help for the previous section and the subsequent ; 
and it begins here : c O women, help.' The third begins 
here : ' Humbleness.' The first is divided into three ; for, 
in the first, I say how she with power makes noble that 
which she looks upon ; and this is as much as to say that 
she brings Love, in power, thither where he is not. In 
the second, I say how she brings Love, in act, into the 
hearts of all those whom she sees. In the third, I tell 
what she afterwards, with virtue, operates upon their 
hearts. The second begins : ' Upon her path ' ; the third : 
' He whom she greeteth.' Then, when I say, ' O women, 
help,' I intimate to whom it is my intention to speak, 
calling on women to help me to honor her. Then, when I 
say, * Humbleness,' I say that same which is said in the 
first part, regarding two acts of her mouth, one whereof 
is her most sweet speech, and the other her marvelous 
smile. Only, I say not of this last how it operates upon 
the hearts of others, because memory cannot retain this 
smile, nor its operation. 1 

1 Dante, The New Life (tr. Rossetti), pp. 57 ff. 



198 METHODS AND AIMS 

IV. ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE VITA NUOVA 

It is to be observed, upon close examination, that the 
poems of the Vita Nuova are arranged in such order as 
to suggest an intention on the part of Dante to give his 
work a symmetrical structure. If the arrangement be ac- 
cidental, or governed simply by the relation of the poems 
to the sequence of the events described in the narrative 
which connects them, it is certainly curious that they 
happened to fall into such order as to give to the little 
book a surprising regularity of construction. 

The succession of the thirty-one poems of the New 
Life is as follows : 

5 sonnets 

1 ballad 

4 sonnets 

1 canzone 

4 sonnets 

1 canzone 

3 sonnets 

1 imperfect canzone 

1 canzone 

1 sonnet 

1 imperfect canzone 

8 sonnets 

At first sight no regularity appears in their order, but 
a little analysis reveals it. The most important poems, 
not only from their form and length, but also from their 
substance, are the three canzoni. Now it will be observed 
that the first canzone is preceded by ten, and followed by 
four, minor poems. The second canzone, which is by far 
the most elaborate poem of the whole, stands alone, hold- 
ing the central place in the volume. The third canzone is 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 199 

preceded by four, and followed by ten, minor poems, like 
the first in inverse order. Thus the arrangement appears 
as follows : 

10 minor poems 

1 canzone 

4 minor poems 

1 canzone 

4 minor poems 

1 canzone 
10 minor poems 

Here, leaving the central canzone to stand by itself, we 
have three series of ten poems each. It will be observed 
further that the first and the third canzone stand at the 
same distance from the central poem, and that ten minor 
poems separate the one from the beginning, the other 
from the end of the book, and in each instance nine of 
these poems are sonnets. It is also worth remark that 
while the first canzone is followed by four sonnets, and 
the third is preceded by three sonnets and an imperfect 
canzone, this imperfect canzone is a single stanza, which 
has the same number of lines, and the same arrangement 
of its lines in respect to rhyme, as a sonnet, differing 
in this respect from the other canzoni. It may be fairly 
classed as a sonnet, its only difference from one being in 
the name that Dante has given to it. 

The symmetrical construction now appears still more 

y ' 10 minor poems, all but one of them sonnets 
1 canzone 
4 sonnets 
1 canzone 
4 sonnets 
1 canzone 
10 minor poems, all but one of them sonnets 



200 METHODS AND AIMS 

It may be taken as evidence that this regularity of 

arrangement was intentional, that a comparison of the 

first with the third canzone shows them to be mutually 

related, one being the balance of the other. The first 

begins : 

Donne ch' avete intelletto d' amore 

Io vo' con voi della mia donna dire ; 

and the last line of its first stanza is : 

Che non e cosa da parlarne altrui. 

In the first stanza of the third there is a distinct refer- 
ence to these words : 

E perche mi ricorda ch' io parlai 
Della mia donna, mentre che vivia, 
Donne gentili, volentier con vui, 
Non vo' parlarne altrui 
Se non a cor gentil che 'n donna sia. 

The second stanza of the first canzone relates to the 
desire which is felt in Heaven for Beatrice. The corre- 
sponding stanza of the third declares that it was this 
desire for her which led to her being taken from the 
world. The third stanza of the one relates to the opera- 
tion of her virtues and beauties upon earth ; of the other, 
to the remembrance of them. There is a similarity of 
expression to be traced throughout. 

In the last stanza, technically called the commiato, or 
dismissal, in which the poem is personified and sent on 
its way, in the first canzone it is called figliuola d 'amoi', 
in the third, figliuola di tristizia. One was the daughter of 
love, the other of sorrow ; one was the poem recording 
Beatrice's life, the other her death. It is thus that one 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 201 

is made to serve as the complement and balance of the 
other, in the structure of the New Life. 

It may be possible to trace a similar relation between 
some of the minor poems of the beginning and the end 
of the volume ; but I have not observed it, if it exists. 

The second canzone is, as I have said, the most impor- 
tant poem in the volume, from the force of imagination 
displayed in it, as well as from its serving to connect the 
life of Beatrice with her death ; and thus it holds, as of 
right, its central position in relation to the poems which 
precede and follow it. 

But another, not less numerically symmetrical division 
of these poems, no longer according to their form, but 
according to their subject, may be observed by the careful 
reader. The first ten of them relate to the beginning of 
Dante's love, and to his own early experiences as a lover. 
At their close he says that it seemed to him he had said 
enough of his own state, and that it behoved him to take 
up a new theme, and that he thereupon resolved thence- 
forth to make the praise of his Lady his sole theme 
(cc. xvii, xviii). This theme is the ruling motive of the 
next ten poems. The last of them is interrupted by the 
death of Beatrice, and thereafter he takes up, as he again 
says, a new theme, and the next ten poems are devoted 
to his affliction, to the episode of the gentle lady, and 
to his return to his faithful love of Beatrice. One poem, 
the last, remains. It differs from all the rest ; he calls it 
a new thing. It is the consummation of his experience 
of love in the vision of his Lady in glory. 

It is to be noted as a peculiarity of this final poem, 
and an indication of its composition at a later period than 



202 METHODS AND AIMS 

those which precede it, that whereas the visions which 
they report have reference, without exception, to things 
which the poet had experienced, or seen, or fancied, when 
awake, thus appearing to be dependent on previous waking 
excitements, the vision related in this sonnet seems, on 
the contrary, to have had its origin in no external circum- 
stance, but to be the result of a purely internal condition 
of feeling. It was a new Intelligence that led his sigh 
upwards — a new Intelligence which prepared him for 
his vision at Easter in 1300. 

If a reason be inquired for that might lead Dante thus 
symmetrically to arrange the poems of this little book in a 
triple series of ten around a central unit, or in a triple 
series of ten, followed by a single poem in which he is 
guided to Heaven by a new Intelligence, it may perhaps 
be found in the value which he set upon ten as the perfect 
number ; while in the three times repeated series, culmi- 
nating in a single central or final poem, he may have 
pleased himself with some fanciful analogy to that three 
and one on which he dwells in the passage in which he 
treats of the friendliness of the number nine to Beatrice. 
At any rate, as he there says, ' this is the reason which I 
see for it, and which best pleases me ; though perchance 
a more subtile reason might be seen therein by a more 
subtile person.' 1 

1 Charles Eliot Norton, The New Life of Dante Alighieri, pp. 129-134. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 203 

V. SOME OF THE TOPICS DISCUSSED BY 

DANTE IN HIS TREATISE DE VULGARI 

ELOQUENTIA 

The illustrious Italian language is equally fit for use 
in prose and in verse. 

The illustrious language must only be used in treating 
of the worthiest subjects, that is, Arms, Love, and Virtue. 

The canzone is the noblest form of poetry. 

Of the different lines admissible in canzoni. The line 
of eleven syllables is the stateliest, and therefore the most 
eligible ; next come the lines of seven, five, and three 
syllables. 

Of construction, that is, the arrangement of words in 
sentences. 

Classification of the words admissible in canzoni. 

The canzone defined as a joining together of stanzas; 
definition of the stanza. 

The arrangement of the parts of the stanza ; the rela- 
tion between its several parts in regard to the number of 
lines and syllables they contain. 

Arrangement of the parts of the stanza in relation to 
the different kinds of lines employed. 

Rhyme in relation to the arrangement of the different 
parts of the stanza. 

The number of lines and syllables in the stanza. 1 

1 From the translation by A. G. Ferrers Howell. The Latin Works 
of D ante (Temple Classics), pp. 65 ff. 



204 METHODS AND AIMS 

VI. THE METHOD OF PETRARCH 

The pleasure of living his youth over again, of meet- 
ing Laura in every line, of examining the history of his 
own heart — and perhaps the consciousness which, after 
all, rarely misleads authors respecting the best of their 
works — induced the poet in his old age to give to his 
love-verses a perfection which has never been attained 
by any other Italian writer, and which he thinks ' he 
could not himself have carried farther.' If the manu- 
scripts did not still exist, it would be impossible to im- 
agine or believe the unwearied pains he has bestowed 
on the correction of his verses. They are curious monu- 
ments, although they afford little aid in exploring by 
what secret workings the long and laborious meditation 
of Petrarch has spread over his poetry all the natural 
charms of sudden and irresistible inspiration. 

The following is a literal translation of a succession 
of memorandums in Latin, at the head of one of his 
sonnets : 

' I began this by the impulse of the Lord [Domino 
iubente], ioth September, at the dawn of day, after my 
morning prayers.' 

' I must make these two verses over again, singing 
them \cantando\ and I must transpose them — 3 o'clock, 
a.m., 19th October.' 

* I like this [hoc placet] — 30th October, 10 o'clock in 
the morning.' 

1 No ; this does not please me — 20th December, in 
the evening.' 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 205 

And in the midst of his corrections he writes, on 
laying down his pen : ' I shall return to this again ; I 
am called to supper.' 

1 February 1 8th, towards noon — this is now well ; how- 
ever, look at it again [vide tamen adhuc\? 

Sometimes he notes the town where he happens to 
be: '1364, Veneris mane, 19 J mi., dum invitus Patavii 
ferior! It might seem rather a curious than useful re- 
mark that it was generally on Friday that he occupied 
himself with the painful labor of correction, did we not 
also know that it was to him a day of fast and penitence. 

When any thought occurred to him, he noted it in the 
midst of his verses, thus : ' Consider this. I had some 
thoughts of transposing these lines, and of making the 
first verse the last, but I have not done so — for the sake 
of ^harmony ; the first would then be more sonorous, 
and the last less so, which is against rule ; for the end 
should be more harmonious than the beginning.' Some- 
times he says : ' The commencement is good, but it is 
not pathetic enough.' In some places he suggests to 
himself to repeat the same words rather than the same 
ideas. In others he judges it better not to multiply the 
ideas, but to amplify them with other expressions. Every 
verse is turned in several different ways ; above each 
phrase and each word he frequently places equivalent 
expressions, in order to examine them again ; and it re- 
quires a profound knowledge of Italian to perceive that, 
after such perplexing scruples, he always adopts those 
words which combine at once most harmony, elegance, 
and energy. 



206 METHODS AND AIMS 

These laborious corrections gave rise to an opinion, 
even in the lifetime of Petrarch, that his verses were the 
work less of a lover than of a poet. It is indubitably true 
that that passion cannot be very strong which we are at 
leisure to describe. But a man of genius feels more in- 
tensely, and suffers more strongly, than another ; and for 
this very reason, when the force of his passion has sub- 
sided, he retains for a longer period the recollection of 
what it has been, and can more easily imagine himself 
again under its influence ; and, in my conception, what 
we call the power of imagination is chiefly the combina- 
tion of strong feelings and recollections. Thus a man of 
genius is peculiarly gifted with the faculty of observing 
the secret workings of human nature as she prevails in 
his own heart, and in the hearts of all mankind ; and is 
enabled to describe those feelings, and bring them home 
to every reader. The great secret of the poet's art is to 
make us feel our existence by the force of sympathy ; 
but at the moment that he groans under his own suffer- 
ings, it is impossible for him to examine the workings 
of his heart or those of others ; and the lyrical poetry 
of Petrarch, which may be read in the course of a few 
days, was written during a period of thirty-two years. 
Many of the pieces, no doubt, were conceived at mo- 
ments when he was under the immediate influence of 
his passion, but were written many days, perhaps many 
months, and certainly perfected many years, afterwards. 
The forty-eighth sonnet of the first part of his collec- 
tion was written eleven years after his acquaintance with 
Laura. . . . Four years after this last epoch he wrote 
the eighty-fifth sonnet. . . . During the course of this 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 207 

year, and the whole of the next, he composed only eleven 
sonnets ; for the ninety-sixth began : 

Rimansi addietro il sestodecim' anno ; 

and the ninety-seventh : 

Dicesetf anni ha gia rivolto il Cielo. 

Thus in these twelve months he wrote only fourteen 
verses to Laura. Indeed, if his mind had experienced no 
intervals of calm, he would never have been able to exe- 
cute those conceptions, and still less to correct them. He 
would not have lived so long ; or, if he had lived, it 
would have been in that state of disquietude and inaction 
inseparable from agitated feelings. The harmony, ele- 
gance, and perfection of his poetry are the result of long 
labor ; but its original conceptions and pathos always 
sprang from the sudden inspirations of a deep and power- 
ful passion. By an attentive perusal of all the writings 
of Petrarch it may be reduced almost to a certainty that by 
dwelling perpetually on the same ideas, and by allowing 
his mind to prey incessantly on itself, the whole train 
of his feelings and reflections acquired one strong char- 
acter and tone ; and if he was ever able to suppress them 
for a time, they returned to him with increased violence ; 
that, to tranquilize this agitated state of his mind, he, in 
the first instance, communicated in a free and loose man- 
ner all that he thought and felt, in his correspondence 
with his intimate friends ; that he afterwards reduced 
these narratives, with more order and description, into 
Latin verse ; and that he, lastly, perfected them with a 
greater profusion of imagery, and more art, in his Italian 



208 METHODS AND AIMS 

poetry, the composition of which at first served only, as he 
frequently says, ' to divert and mitigate all his afflictions.' 
We may thus understand the perfect concord which 
prevails in Petrarch's poetry between nature and art ; 
between the accuracy of fact and the magic of invention ; 
between depth and perspicuity ; between devouring passion 
and calm meditation. In three or four verses of Italian he 
often condenses the description, and concentrates the fire, 
which fill a page of his elegies and letters in Latin. It is 
precisely because the poetry of Petrarch originally sprang 
from his heart that his passion never seems fictitious or 
cold, notwithstanding the profuse ornament of his style, 
or the metaphysical elevation of his thoughts. In the 
movement of Laura's eyes he sees a light which points 
out the way to heaven. ... He exclaims that ' the atmos- 
phere becomes smiling, luminous, and serene at her ap- 
proach ' ; . . . that l the air which is breathed around her 
is so purified by the celestial radiance of her countenance 
that, while he fixes his eyes upon her, every sensual desire 
is extinguished.' . . . Still he is always natural. 1 

VII. THE METHOD OF GEORGE HERBERT 

To-day it is usual to make a sharp distinction between 
the real and the artificial ; but Herbert knows no such 
contrast. When he is most artificial, he is all aglow with 
passion ; and when he describes one of his own moods, 
he is full of constructive artifice. That he was a truly 
religious man, no one will doubt. 2 

1 Ugo Foscolo, Essays on Petrarch (London, 1823), pp. 56-63. 
2 Palmer, Life and Works of George Herbert 1. 118. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 209 

In calling attention to Herbert's ability to shape a 
poem as a whole, we may claim for him a high degree 
of originality. Little had been done in this kind before. 
Our early lyric poetry is more remarkable for vividness 
than for form. Its writers feel keenly and speak daringly. 
By some means or other they usually succeed in stirring 
in their reader's heart feelings similar to their own. But 
not often do they show that sense of order and coherence 
which is expected in every other species of fine art. 
Perhaps words are easier material than paint, stone, or 
sound, and lend themselves more readily to caprice. Of 
course without a certain sequence no lyric could picture 
a poet's feeling. Near the beginning the occasion of the 
feeling is announced ; then follow its manifestations ; 
and at the close it is usually connected in some way with 
action, resolve, or judgment. Such an emotional scheme 
is often unfolded with much delicacy and evenness in the 
songs of Campion, and in both the songs and sonnets 
of Sidney and Shakespeare. 

But these are vague divisions, the second especially 
so. They do not alone give firmness of form. They make 
poetic writing rather than finished poems. Stirred by 
some passion, real or imaginary, the poet begins to write, 
pours forth his feeling until the supply, or the reader, is 
exhausted, and then stops. He has no predetermined 
beginning, middle, and end. Part with part has no 
private amitie. The place and amount of each portion 
is fixed by no plan of the whole, but rather by the way- 
wardness of the writer. In most early lyrics, even the 
best, stanzas might be omitted, added, or transposed, 
without considerable damage. Each stands pretty much 



2IO METHODS AND AIMS 

by itself. In the two stanzas of Ben Jonson's stirring 
song, Drink to me only with thine eyes, neither is neces- 
sary to the other. Those of his Queen and huntress 
chaste and fair might about as well have taken any 
other order. This is the more remarkable because into 
the drama Jonson carried form in much the same con- 
scious way that Herbert carried it into lyric poetry. But 
if in the early lyrists the desire for closely-knitted struc- 
ture is slight, it is feebler still in the writers of reflective 
verse. These men wander wherever thought or a' good 
phrase leads, and are rarely restrained by any compacted 
plan. In short, we read most of the early poetry for the 
sake of splendid bursts, vigorous stanzas, pithy lines. 
To obtain these, we willingly pass through much that is 
formless and uninteresting. Seldom do we get singleness 
of impression. Sidney, in his Defense of Poesy, com- 
plained of the poets of his day that their ' matter is 
quodlibety which they never marshal ' into any assured 
rank,' so that ' the readers cannot tell where to find them- 
selves.' Until Herbert appeared, unity of structure was 
little regarded. 

To such articulated structure Herbert devoted himself, 
and what he accomplished forms one of his two consid- 
erable contributions to English poetry. In his pages we 
see for the first time a great body of lyrics in which the 
matter and the form are at one. Impulsive and ardent 
though Herbert seems, he holds himself like a true artist 
responsive to his shaping theme. Not that he acquires 
power of this sort at once, or has it always. The Church- 
Porch is loose, and in many of the ecclesiastical poems of 
his Cambridge years, there is only such general structure 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 211 

as springs from announced theme, emotional develop- 
ment, and moral ending. But the demand for form is 
deep in him, and more and more he puts himself at its 
service. In something like a quarter of his work he 
attains a solidity of structure hitherto unknown. That 
his achievements in this field exercised little influence 
over his immediate successors is true, and surprising. 
But he set the most difficult of examples. Strong form 
is not catching. Only a man of energy and restraint is 
capable of it. Other qualities, too, of Herbert's style 
obscured his form. So rich is he in suggestion, so intel- 
lectually difficult, so tender in religious appeal, that atten- 
tion is easily withdrawn from his structure, and becomes 
fixed on details. Whatever the cause, the poets who 
follow him, and are most affected by his invention of the 
religious love-lyric, have small regard for his second in- 
vention — structural plan. C. Harvey, Vaughan, Crashaw, 
Traherne, are conspicuously lacking in restraint. They 
do not appear to notice the artistic weaving of Herbert's 
verse, which has brought it through the rough usage of 
nearly three centuries, while their own often more bril- 
liant work now lies largely neglected. Even to-day few 
think of Herbert as one of our pioneers in poetic structure. 
Briefly to present the evidence for this solidity of 
form is not easy. The point to be proved is not that 
Herbert exercised remarkable skill in building certain 
poems. Occasional fine structure was not unknown be- 
fore. What Herbert did was to vindicate unity of design 
as a working factor of poetry. He showed how by its 
use much may be said in little. He made it plain that 
any theme, if fully and economically embodied, will not 



212 METHODS AND AIMS 

lack interest. It is therefore the frequency of his work 
in this kind which I wish to show. This I think I can 
do most effectively by dividing his one hundred and 
sixty-nine poems into four groups, according to the prev- 
alence in them of the principle of form. There appear 
to be fifty-eight in which there is no wandering from a 
predetermined plan. 1 

Among Herbert's poems there is one called Hope, which 
may be taken as a fair specimen of the difficulties of his 
verse, with its conceits, its condensation and ellipses of 
thought, where spontaneity and reality seem to be over- 
shadowed by ingenuity. And yet beneath these outward 
signs there runs the sad intensity of passion. The poem 
is here given, with Mr. Palmer's interpretation. . . . 

HOPE 

I gave to Hope a watch of mine ; but he 

An anchor gave to me. 
Then an old prayer book I did present ; 

And he an optick sent. 
With that I gave a viall full of tears ; 

But he a few green eares. 
Ah Loyterer ! I 'le no more, no more I 'le bring. 

I did expect a ring. 

Mr. Palmer connects the poem with the contradictions 
of love, a constant subject with Herbert. His lines might 
have been called ' The Weariness of Hope ' : 'To Love 
I gave my time, prayers, and tears ; serving Love long, 
and getting small return, I remind him of time passing, 
prayers offered, tears shed ; still he gives only hopes, 
visions, immature fruit ; I despair.' Translating into 

1 Palmer, Life and Wo?-ks of George Herbert i. 138-142. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 213 

abstract terms Herbert's imagery of things, the sequence 
of his thought might be represented thus : 

To Love I said : 'Hast thou forgotten Time ? ' 

1 Time counts for naught with Love, for Love is Hope.' 

But I prayed still the prayer I ever prayed. 

1 Look far away,' said Love, ' not on things near.' I wept. 
1 Nay, here and now is fruit,' he said. c Unripe indeed.' 

1 Why such delay ? ' cried I. * Give all or none ! ' x 



VIII. GEORGE HERBERT: LOVE UNKNOWN 

['This is the only poem in which Herbert professes to speak 
with a friend ; and the friend is but another mood of Herbert him- 
self (line 11).' — Palmer. The structure of the poem is obvious.] 

Dear Friend, sit down ; the tale is long and sad ; 
And in my faintings I presume your love 

Will more comply than help. A Lord I had, 
And have, of whom some grounds which may improve 

I hold for two lives, and both lives in me. 
To him I brought a dish of fruit one day, 

And in the middle placed my heart. But he 

(I sigh to say) 
Looked on a servant who did know his eye 

Better than you know me, or (which is one) 
Than I myself. The servant instantly, 

Quitting the fruit, seized on my heart alone 
And threw it in a font wherein did fall 

A stream of blood which issued from the side 
Of a great rock. I well remember all 

And have good cause. There it was dipped and dyed, 

1 A. V. G. Allen, Palmer's Herbert in the Atlantic Monthly 97. 97. 



214 METHODS AND AIMS 

And washed and wrung ; the very wringing yet 

Enforceth tears. Your heart was foul, I fear. 
Indeed 't is true. I did and do commit 

Many a fault more than my lease will bear, 
Yet still asked pardon, and was not denied. 

But you shall hear. After my heart was well, 
And clean and fair, as I one eventide 

(I sigh to tell) 

Walked by myself abroad, I saw a large 
And spacious furnace flaming, and thereon 

A boiling cauldron round about whose verge 
Was in great letters set affliction. 

The greatness showed the owner. So I went 
To fetch a sacrifice out of my fold, 

Thinking with that which I did thus present 
To warm his love, which I did fear grew cold. 

But as my heart did tender it, the man 
Who was to take it from me slipped his hand, 

And threw my heart into the scalding pan — 
My heart, that brought it (do you understand ?) — 

The offerer's heart. Your heart was hard, I fear. 
Indeed 't is true. I found a callous matter 

Began to spread and to expatiate there ; 
But with a richer drug than scalding water 

I bathed it often, even with holy blood, 
Which at a board, while many drunk bare wine, 

A friend did steal into my cup for good, 
Even taken inwardly, and most divine 

To supple hardnesses. But at the length 
Out of the cauldron getting, soon I fled 

Unto my house, where to repair the strength 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 215 

Which I had lost, I hasted to my bed. 

But when I thought to sleep out all these faults 

(I sigh to speak) 
I found that some had stuffed the bed with thoughts, 

I would say thorns. Dear, could my heart not break. 
When with my pleasures even my rest was gone ? 

Full well I understood who had been there, 
For I had given the key to none but one. 

It must be he. Your heart was dull, I fear. 
Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mind 

Did oft possess me, so that when I prayed, 
Though my lips went, my heart did stay behind. 

But all my scores were by another paid, 
Who took the debt upon him. Truly, Friend, 

For aught I hear, your Master shows to you 
More favor than you wot of. Mark the end: 

The Font did only what was old renew, 
The Cauldron sicppled what was grow?i too hard, 

The Thorns did quicken what was grown too dull, 
All did but strive to mend what you had marred. 

Wherefore be cheered, and praise him to the full 
Each day, each hour, each moment of the week, 

Who fain would have you, be new, tender, quick. 



216 METHODS AND AIMS 

IX. SOCRATES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF 
COMPOSITION 

Socrates. Will you tell me whether I denned love at 
the beginning of my speech ? for, having been in an 
ecstasy, I cannot well remember. 

Phaedrus. Yes, indeed ; that you did, and no mistake. 

Soc. Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous 
and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were 
far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus. 
Alas ! how inferior to them he is ! But perhaps I am 
mistaken ; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover's 
speech did insist on our supposing love to be something 
or other which he fancied him to be, and according to 
this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his 
discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again. 

Phaedr. If you please ; but you will not find what 
you want. 

Soc. Read, that I may have his exact words. 

Phaedr. ' You know how matters stand with me, and 
how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our com- 
mon interest ; and I maintain I ought not to fail in my suit 
because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kind- 
nesses which they have shown, when their love is over.' 

Soc. Here he appears to have done just the reverse 
of what he ought ; for he has begun at the end, and is 
swimming on his back through the flood to the place of 
starting. His address to the fair youth begins where the 
lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus ? 

Phaedr. Yes, indeed, Socrates ; he does begin at 
the end. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 217 

Soc. Then as to the other topics — are they not thrown 
down anyhow ? Is there any principle in them ? Why 
should the next topic follow next in order, or any other 
topic ? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he 
wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare 
say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the 
succession of the several parts of the composition ? 

Phaedr. You have too good an opinion of me if you 
think that I have any such insight into his principles of 
composition, 

Soc. At any rate, you will allow that every discourse 
ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own 
and a head and feet ; there should be a middle, begin- 
ning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole ? 

Phaedr. Certainly. 

Soc. Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias ? See 
whether you can find any more connection in his words 
than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been 
inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian. 

Phaedr. What is there remarkable in the epitaph ? 

Soc. It is as follows : 

I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas ; 
So long as water flows and tall trees grow, 
So long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding, 
I shall declare to passers-by that Midas sleeps below. 

Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes 
last, as you will perceive, makes no difference. 

Phaedr. You are making fun of that oration of ours. 

Soc. Well, I will say no more about your friend's 
speech lest I should give offence to you ; although I think 
that it might furnish many other examples of what a man 



218 METHODS AND AIMS 

ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed to the other 
speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students 
of rhetoric. . . . 

I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. 
Yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved 
two principles of which we should be too glad to have a 
clearer description if art could give us one. 

Phaedr. What are they ? 

Soc. First, the comprehension of scattered particulars 
in one idea ; as in our definition of love, which, whether 
true or false, certainly gave clearness and consistency 
to the discourse, the speaker should define his several 
notions, and so make his meaning clear. 

Phaedr. What is the other principle, Socrates ? 

Soc. The second principle is that of division into spe- 
cies according to the natural formation, where the joint is, 
not breaking any part as a bad carver might. Just as our 
two discourses alike assumed, first of all, a single form of 
unreason ; and then, as the body which from being one be- 
comes double and may be divided into a left side and right 
side, each having parts right and left of the same name — 
after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts 
of the left side, and did not desist until he found in them an 
evil or left-handed love which he justly reviled ; and the 
other discourse, leading us to the madness which lay on the 
right side, found another love, also having the same name, 
but divine, which the speaker held up before us and ap- 
plauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits. 

Phaedr. Most true. 

Soc. I am myself a great lover of these processes of 
division and generalization ; they help me to speak and 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 219 

to think. And if I find any man who is able to see 
l a One and Many' in nature, him I follow, and 'walk 
in his footsteps as if he were a god.' 1 

X. THE METHOD OF AGATHON IN THE 
SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO 

Very good, Phaedrus, said Agathon. . . . Let me say 
first how I ought to speak, and then speak : 

The previous speakers, instead of praising the god 
Love, or unfolding his nature, appear to have congrat- 
ulated mankind on the benefits which he confers upon 
them. But I would rather praise the god first, and then 
speak of his gifts ; this is always the right way of prais- 
ing everything. May I say, without impiety or offence, 
that of all the blessed gods he is the most blessed, because 
he is the fairest and best ? . . . And not only is he just, 
but exceedingly temperate. ... As to courage, even the 
God of War is no match for him ; . . . but I have yet to 
speak of his wisdom. ... In the first place, he is a poet, 
. . . and he is also the source of poesy in others, which 
he could not be if he were not himself a poet. And at 
the touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though 
he had no music in him before ; this also is a proof that 
Love is a good poet, and accomplished in all the fine 
arts ; for no one can give to another that which he has 
not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowledge. 
Who will deny that the creation of animals is his doing ? 
Are they not all the works of his wisdom, born and be- 
gotten of him ? And as to the artists, do we not know that 

l Plato, Phaedrus (tr. Jowett), 



220 METHODS AND AIMS 

he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame ? 
— he whom Love touches not walks in darkness. The arts 
of medicine and archery and divination were discovered by 
Apollo, under the guidance of love and desire ; so that 
he too is a disciple of Love. Also the melody of the 
Muses, the metallurgy of Hephaestus, the weaving of 
Athene, the empire of Zeus over gods and men, are all 
due to Love, who was the inventor of them. And so 
Love set in order the empire of the gods — the love of 
beauty, as is evident, for with deformity Love has no 
concern. In the days of old, . . . dreadful deeds were 
done among the gods, for they were ruled by Necessity ; 
but now, since the birth of Love, and from the Love of 
the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth. 
Therefore, Phaedrus, I say of Love that he is the fairest 
and best in himself, and the cause of what is fairest and 
best in all other things. 1 

XL DIOTIMA EXPLAINS THE METHOD OF 
ARTISTIC EDUCATION TO SOCRATES 

['He who would be truly initiated should pass from the concrete 
to the abstract, from the individual to the universal, from the 
universal to the universe of truth and beauty.' — Jowett.] 

Diotima. . . . These are the lesser mysteries of love, 
into which even you, Socrates, may enter ; to the greater 
and more hidden ones which are the crown of these, and 
to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, 
I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do 
my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. 

1 Plato, Symposium (tr. Jowett). 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 221 

For he who would proceed aright in this matter should 
begin in youth to visit beautiful forms ; and first, if he be 
guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form 
only — out of that he should create fair thoughts ; and 
soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one 
form is akin to the beauty of another ; and then, if beauty 
of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be 
not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and 
the same ! And when he perceives this, he will abate his 
violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem 
a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful 
forms ; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty 
of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the 
outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little 
comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and 
will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may 
improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate 
and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to under- 
stand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and 
that personal beauty is a trifle ; and after laws and insti- 
tutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see 
their beauty, being not, like a servant, in love with the 
beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave, 
mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and con- 
templating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many 
fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of 
wisdom ; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, 
and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single 
science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. . . . 

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of 
love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due 



222 METHODS AND AIMS 

order and succession, when he comes toward the end will 
suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, 
Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils) — a nature 
which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and 
decaying, or waxing and waning ; secondly, not fair in 
one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or 
in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in 
another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some 
and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands 
or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of 
speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as 
for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or 
in any other place ; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, 
and everlasting, which without diminution and without 
increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing 
and perishing beauties of all other things. He who, from 
these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to 
perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the 
true order of going, or being led by another, to the things 
of love is to begin from the beauties of earth, and mount 
upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as 
steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two 
to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and 
from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions 
he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last 
knows what the essence of beauty is. 1 

1 Plato, Symposium. The Dialogues of Plato (tr. Jowett), New York, 
Oxford University Press, 1892, 1. 472-475, 564-567, 580-582. By per- 
mission. 



METHOD IN THE POETRY OF LOVE 223 

XII. WORDSWORTH OX LOVE AXD REASOX 

This spiritual love acts not nor can exist 
Without imagination, which, in truth, 
Is but another name for absolute power 
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, 
And reason in her most exalted mood. 
This faculty hath been the feeding source 
Of our long labor . . . 

Imagination having been our theme, 

So also hath that intellectual love, 

For they are each in each, and cannot stand 

Divi dually. 1 

XIII. THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER OF FIRST 
CORINTHIANS 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of 
angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding^ 
brass, or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the 
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all 
knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could 
remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. 
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 
and though I give my body to be burned, and have not 
love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and 
is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is 
not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh 
not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; 

J Prelude 14. 1SS-194, 206-209. 



224 METHODS AND AIMS 

beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things. Love never faileth. But whether 
there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be 
tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, 
it shall vanish away ; for we know in part, and we 
prophesy in part ; but when that which is perfect is 
come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood 
as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became 
a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in 
a mirror, 1 darkly ; but then face to face. Now I know 
in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 
And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three ; but 
the greatest of these is love. 

1 That is, in a mirror of burnished metal. 



INDEX OF EXTRACTS AND 
ILLUSTRATIONS 



Agassiz, Shaler on the Method 

of, 27 
Agathon, the Method of, in the 

Symposium of Plato, 219 
Aristotle and Method, John Burnet 

on, 2 
Art equals Method [Lane Cooper], 

2 

Balzac [Gautier on], 92 

Boeckh, August, on Interpretation 
and Criticism, 45 

Boeckh, Professor Cook's Adapta- 
tion of, 46 

Boeckh on the Relation of Ency- 
clopaedia to Methodology, 49 

Brewer, John Sherren,The Method 
of [Henry Wace], 34 

Browning [Saul 17. 1-5], 187 

Burnet, John, on Aristotle and 
Method, 2 

Burns, Robert, Minto on, 132 

Byron's Early Reading, 155 

Coleridge, Gilman on, 81 
Coleridge [on Christabel\ 81 
Cook, Professor [Albert S.], Adap- 
tation of Boeckh, 46 
Cox, Kenyon, on Design in Paint- 
ing, 18 

Dante, A Method of Study sug- 
gested by the Practice of, 195 

[Dante.] On the Structure of the 
Vita Nuova [Norton], 198 

Dante, Some of the Topics dis- 
cussed by, in his Treatise De 
Vulgari Eloquentia, 203 

De Quincey [Lane Cooper on], 83 



Design in Painting, Kenyon Cox 

on, 18 
Diotima explains the Method of 

Artistic Education to Socrates 

[from the Symposium of Plato], 

220 
Discipline, Milton on, 1 

First Corinthians, The Thirteenth 
Chapter of, 223 

Gillies, R. P., Wordsworth to, 57 
Gilman on Coleridge, 81 
Glance at Wordsworth's Reading, 
A [Lane Cooper], 96 

Hamilton, William Rowan, Words- 
worth to, 57, 59, 62 

Hearn, Lafcadio [Elizabeth Bisland 
on], 90 

Herbert, George, Love Unknown, 

213 
Herbert, George, The Method of 

[Palmer, and Allen], 208 
Horace [Ars Poetica, 289-294], 76 
Hunt, Leigh, on Reconstructing 

the Spirit of the Past, 44 

Illustration of Shakespeare's Use 
of Books, An [Lane Cooper], 
170 

Interpretation and Criticism, Au- 
gust Boeckh on, 45 

Johnson, Samuel [from Boswell], 

79 
Jonson, Ben, on Shakespeare, 76 
Jonson, Ben, on Style, 77 
Jowett [on the sermons of], 92 



225 



226 



METHODS AND AIMS 



Lamb, Charles [on composition], 

85 
Leonardo da Vinci on Method in 

the Art of Painting, 14 
Lockwood, Professor [Laura E.], 

on Milton's Corrections of the 

Minor Poems, 63 
Lonsdale, Lord,Wordsworth to, 62 
Love and Reason, Wordsworth on, 

223 
Love Unknown, George Herbert, 

213 

Manzoni [the Nation on], 85 

Method in the Art of Painting, 
Leonardo da Vinci on, 14 

Method of Agassiz, Shaler on the, 
27 

Method of Agathon in the Sympo- 
sium of Plato, The, 219 

Method of Artistic Education, 
Diotima explains the [from the 
Symposium of Plato], 220 

Method of George Herbert, The 
[Palmer, and Allen], 208 

Method of John Sherren Brewer, 
The [Henry Wace], 34 

Method of Petrarch, The [Fos- 
calo], 204 

Method of Study suggested by the 
Practice of Dante, A, 195 

Method of the Troubadours, The 
[Justin H. Smith], 187 

Method, Sir Joshua Reynolds on, 
16 

Methodology, Boeckh on the Rela- 
tion of Encyclopaedia to, 49 

Methodology, Shedd on, 4 

Methods and Aims in the Study of 
Literature : Opinions from two 
Poets [Lane Cooper], 52 

Milton on Discipline, 1 

Milton's Account of his own Edu- 
cation, 179 

Milton's Corrections of the Minor 
Poems, Professor Lockwood on, 

63 

Milton's Plans and Studies for 

Paradise Lost [Masson], 17 1 
Minto on Robert Burns, 132 



Newman, Cardinal [on composi- 
tion], 84 

Paradise Lost, Milton's Plans and 
Studies for [Masson], 171 

Personality and Method, Sir Fred- 
erick Pollock on, 26 

Petrarch, the Method of [Foscalo], 
204 

[Plato.] Diotima explains the 
Method of Artistic Education 
to Socrates, 220 

[Plato.] Socrates on the Principles 
of Composition, 216 

[Plato.] The Method of Agathon 
in the Symposium, 219 

Pollock, Sir Frederick, on Person- 
ality and Method, 26 

Principles of Composition, Soc- 
rates on the [from the Phaedrus 
of Plato], 216 

Reconstructing the Spirit of the 

Past, Leigh Hunt on, 44 
Relation of Art to Science, Herbert 

Spencer on the, 8 
Relation of Encyclopaedia to 

Methodology, Boeckh on the, 49 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on Method, 

16 
Rousseau [from the Confessions], 

80 

Shakespeare, Ben Jonson on, 76 

Shakespeare's Books [H. R. D. 
Anders], 164 

Shakespeare's Use of Books, An 
Illustration of [Lane Cooper], 
170 

Shaler on the Method of Agassiz, 
27 

Shedd on Methodology, 4 

Socrates on the Principles of Com- 
position [from the Phaedrus of 
Plato], 216 

Spencer, Herbert, on the Relation 
of Art to Science, 8 

Spenser's Use of Books [Ida Lang- 
don], 158 

Stevenson [Chalmers on], 87 



INDEX OF EXTRACTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 227 

Vulgari Eloquentia, De, Some of 
the Topics discussed by Dante 
in his Treatise, 203 

Wordsworth, as seen by his Sister, 

82 
Wordsworth on Love and Reason, 

223 
Wordsworth's Reading, A Glance 

at [Lane Cooper], 96 
Wordsworth to Lord Lonsdale, 

62 
Wordsworth to R. P. Gillies, 57 
Wordsworth to William Rowan 

Hamilton, 57, 59, 62 



Structure of the Vita Nuova, On 

the [Norton], 198 
Study of Literature, Methods and 

Aims in the — Opinions from 

two Poets [Lane Cooper], 52 
Style, Ben Jonson on, 77 
Symposium of Plato, the Method 

of Agathon in the, 219 

Tennyson [Allingham on], 86 
Thirteenth Chapter of First Corin- 
thians, The, 223 
Troubadours, The Method of the 
[Justin H. Smith], 187 

Vita Nuova, On the Structure of 
the [Norton], 198 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 

[Titles of books, articles, and poems are included, and the names 
of authors ; but when an author is the subject of a selection, only 
the first reference is specified for that selection ; names of places 
are omitted, as are also, with a few exceptions, names of fictitious 
persons in poems and the like.] 



Abba Tkule, Bowies', 124 

Academy, The, 105 n. 

Account of Denmark as it was in 
i6g2, An, no 

Account of Switzerland, Bianchi's, 
no 

Accoutit of the Kingdom of Hun- 
gary, no 

Account of Voyages to the South 
and North, by Sir fohn Aar- 
borough and others, ill 

Adams, (? Clement), 157 

Adams, Miss, 79 

Addison, 136 

Adolphus, 155 

Advancement of Learni?ig, Bacon's, 
5 n. 

Aeschylus, 106 

Aesop, 169 

Affliction of Margaret , The, 

Wordsworth's, 116 

Agassiz, Louis, 27 ff. 

Agathon, 219 

Ainslie, Robert, 151 

Akenside, 141 

Alberoni, 155 

Allen, A. V. G., 213 m 

Allingham, William, 87 n. 

American War, Andrews', 157 

Ancient and Modern Letters, 
Cooper's, 171 n. 

Ancient History, Rollin's, 155 

Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the, 
Coleridge's, 108, 121, 122 



Anders, H. R. D., 169 m 

Anderson, 157 

Andreini, 175 

Andrews, 157 

Angelo, Michael, 7 

Anima Poetae, Coleridge's, 117 n. 

Anne, Countess of Winchelsea, 

105 

Anne, Queen, 122, 126, 135 

Antiquities, Potter's, 155 

Antony and Cleopatra, Shake- 
speare's, 170, 170 n. 

Apocalypse, the, 178 

Apology for Idlers, An, Steven- 
son's, 89 

Apology for Smectymnuus, An, 
Milton's, 186 n. 

Arcades, Milton's, 68, 69, 71, 73 

Ariosto, 162, 178 

Aristotle, 2, 3, 4, 4m, 35, 163 

Armour, Jean, 145 

Arnaut Daniel, 188, 189, 190, 194 

Arnold, Matthew, 151 

Arrian, 155 

Ars Poetica, Horace's, 76 n. 

Atala, Chateaubriand's, 125 

Athenaeum, The, 109 n., non., 
119, 119 n., 123 n., 124 n. 

Atlantic Monthly, The, 99, 213 n. 

Atlas, The, 155 

Augustus Caesar, 77 

Au Id Lang Syne, Burns', 142, 144 

Austin, 158 

Aynard, Joseph, 107 



229 



230 



METHODS AND AIMS 



Bach, 189 

Bacon, 5, 511., 35, 41, 157 

Balboa, 125 

Balzac, 92 ff. 

Balzac, Honori de, Gautier's, 95 n. 

Bartram, William, no, 115, 116, 

119, 120, 120 n., 123, 124, 125 
Basanier, no 
Baudelaire, 88 
Baynes, T. S., 168, 169 
Beatrice, Dante's, 184, 200 
Beattie, 157 
Bede, 161 

Bedier, Joseph, 125, 125 n. 
Belisaire, 157 
Belsham, 155 
Berkeley, 157 
Bianchi, no 
Bible, the, 137, 151, 160, 167, 

177, 178 
Biographia Literaria, Coleridge's, 

54 n. 
Bion, 163 

Bisland, Elizabeth, 91 n. 
Bisset, 155 
Blackstone, 157 
Blair, 158 

Blind Highland Boy, The, Words- 
worth's, 117 
Boeckh, August, 17 n., 45, 46, 

46 n., 49, 52 n. 
Boethius, Hector, 155 
Bolingbroke, 157 
Bonaparte, 157 
Bonnard, 157 

Book of Snobs, The, Thackeray's, 88 
Boswell, 79, 79 n. 
Bowles, 105, 124, 124 n. 
Bowyer, James, 53 
Bradley, A. C, 64, 64 n. 
Brandes, Georg, 97, 98 
Brani inediti dei Promessi Sposi, 

85, 86 
Brewer, John Sherren, 34 ff., 43 n. 
British Nepos, 157 
British Plutarch, 157 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 88 
Browning, 187 
Bruce, James, in, 113, 123, 124, 

157 



Buchanan, George, 155, 160 
Buchanan, Rev. J. L., no 
Burke, 47, 48 
Burnet, Gilbert, no 
Burnet, John, 2, 4 n. 
Burns, 132 ff., 164, 190 
Busbequius, no 
Byron, 100, 125, 153, 155 
Byron, Life of, Moore's, 158 n. 

Caesar, Julius, 155, 157 

Callimachus, 160 

Calvert, 104 

Cambridge, 157 

Camden, 160, 164 

Camoens, 124 

Campbell, J. Dykes, 108 n., 123 n., 

124 m 
Campbell, John, 157 
Campion, 209 
Candolle, De, 6 
Cantemir, Prince, 156 
Carlyle, 133, 137, 138, 148, 153 
Carr, 170 m 
Carver, Jonathan, 109, 116, n6n., 

123, 125 
Casella, 75 
Castelain, 77 n., 79 n. 
Cato, 169 
Catullus, 53 
Cellarius, 157 
Chalmers, W. P., 90 n. 
Chapman, 125 
Charakteristische Eigenschaften von 

R. L. Stevenson's Stil, Chalmers', 

90 n. 
Charles Surface, 147 
Charles the Eleventh, Norberg's, 

156 
Charles the Fifth, Robertson's, 157 
Charles the First, King, 178 
Charles the Second, King, 147 
Chateaubriand, 124, 125 
Chaucer, 100, 104, 105, 114, 134, 

163 
Chironomta, Austin's, 158 
Chopin, 189 

Christabel, Coleridge's, 81, 81 n. 
Chronicles, Froissart's, 155 
Church-Porch, The, Herbert's, 210 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



231 



Cicero, 53, 158, 169, 178 

Cid, The, Corneille's, 157 

Circumcision, Upon the, Milton's, 
66, 67 

Classic Point of View, The, Keny on 
Cox's, 25 

Clenard, 169 

Clifford, Kingdon, 26 n. 

Coleridge, E. H., 81 n., 117 n. 

Coleridge, Hartley, 116 

Coleridge's Poems, Facsimile Repro- 
duction (ed. Campbell), 123 n. 

Coleridge, S. T., 41, 53, 81, 103, 
104, 107, 108, 108 n., no, 112, 
116, 117, 117 n., 120, 122, 123, 
123 n., 124, 124 n. 

Collection of Voyages, Travels, and 
Discoveries, Mavor's, no 

College Sermons, Jowett's, 92 n. 

Collins, J. C, 125 n. 

Collins, William, 141 

Complaint of a Fo?saken Indian 
Woman, The, Wordsworth's, 116 

Comus, Milton's, 65, 67, 68, 69, 
70, 71, 72, 73 

Confessions, Rousseau's, 81 n., 157 

Confessions of an English Opium- 
Eater, De Quincey's, 83, 84 

Conington, 76 n. 

Contemporary Review, The, 8j 

Cook, Albert S., 46, 48 n. 

Cook, Captain James, 121, 128 

Cooper, Lane, 56 n., 84 n., 96 n., 
132 n., 171 n. 

Corderius'' Colloquies, 169 

Cortez, 125 

Cottar's Saturday Night, The, 
Burns', 142 

Cowper, 125 

Cox, Kenyon, 18, 25 n. 

Coxe, 113 

Crabbe, 136 

Crashaw, 211 

Craven, 124 

Cromwell, 157 

Cuvier, 6 

Czar Peter, Voltaire's, 1 56, 1 57 

Dampier, 117 

Daniel, Arnaut, 188, 189, 190, 194 



Dante, 75, 178, 187, 188, 189, 190, 
194, 195 ff., 197 n., 198 Iff., 203 

Darwin, Erasmus, 106 

Davila, 156 

da Vinci, Leonardo, 14, 16 n. 

Death of Isaac Newton, Thom- 
son's, 116 

De Candolle, 6 

Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire, Gibbon's, 155 

Defense of Poesy, Sidney's, 210 

Defoe, 88 

Demosthenes, 53, 158, 178 

Den?nark as it was in i6g2, An 
Account of, no 

De Quincey, 83, 91 

De Quiros, 124 

Description of Formosa, Psalmana- 
zar's, in 

Descriptive Sketches, Wordsworth's, 

113 

de Selincourt, E., 109 n., 113 n. 

De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dante's, 
203 

Dialogues of Plato, The (tr. Jowett), 
222 n. 

Diary, A, Allingham's, 87 n. 

Diodati, John, 180 

Diodorus Siculus, 160 

Diotima, 220 

Discourses on Art, Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds', 17 n. 

Discoveries, Ben Jonson's, 77 n., 
79 n. 

Dodsley, 136 

Don Juan, 146 

Dowden, 97, 97 n., 109 n., 117 n. 

Drayton, 105 

Drink to me only, Jonson's, 210 

Drummond, 157 

Dryden, 41, 105, 135 

Du Bartas, 178 

Duncan Gray, Burns', 142 

Earl of Southampton, 164 

Early Life of William Wordszvorth, 

The, Legouis', 103 n., 108 n., 

113 n., n6n., 130 n. 
Easy Club, The, 137 
Ebb Tide, The, Stevenson's, 8q 



232 



METHODS AND AIMS 



Eclogues, Mantuan's, 169 

Eclogues, Virgil's, 135 

Edinburgh University Magazine, 

The, 88 
Edwards, Bryan, 123 
ElKovoKXacrTrjs, Milton's, 178 
Elegies, Shenstone's, 151 
Elizabeth, Queen, 126 
Emerson, 96, 96 n. 
Emile, Rousseau's, 130 
Encyclopadie und Methodologie, 

Boeckh's, 46 n., 52 n. 
English History, On the Study of, 

J. S. Brewer's, 39 
English Studies, J. S. Brewer's, 

43 n - 
English Traits, Emerson's, 96 n. 
Epistles, Cicero's, 169 
Epitaphium Damonis, Milton's, 

171 

Epithalamion Thamesis, Spen- 
ser's, 159 

Essay on Criticism, Pope's, 140, 141 

Essay on the Liberty of Unlicensed 
Printing, Milton's, 150 

Essays on Education and Kindred 
Subjects, Spencer's, 13 n. 

Essays on Petrarch, Foscolo's, 208 

Ethics of Aristotle, The, Burnet's, 
4n. 

Etudes Critiques, Bedier's, 125, 
125 n. 

Eugene, 157 

Euripides, 178 

Eutropius, 155 

Excursion, The, Wordsworth's, 
115, 116, 116 n., 117, 118 n., 
131, 132 m 

Expostulation and Reply, Words- 
worth's, 98, 123 

Fables, Aesop's, 169 

Faerie Queene, The, Spenser's, 1 59, 

162, 163 
Familiar Studies of Men and 

Books, Stevenson's, 146 
Famous French Authors, 95 n. 
Famous Victories of Henry the 

Fifth, The, 166 
Farmer's Ingle, Fergusson's, 142 



Fergusson, 138, 139, 142, 143 

Field, Barron, 105 n. 

Fifteen Discoicrses on Art, Sir 

Joshua Reynolds', 17 n. 
First Corinthians, the Thirteenth 

Chapter of, 223 
Fletcher of Saltoun, 150 
Fontenelle, 135 
Forster, 124 
Foscolo, Ugo, 208 n. 
Four Lives from N'orth's Plutarch, 

Carr's, 170 n. 
Frederick the Second, 156 
Froissart, 155 
Furnivall, 169 

Gautier, Theophile, 95 n., 146 

Gay, 136 

Gentle Shepherd, The, Ramsay's, 

137, 138 
Gibbon, 155 

Gildersleeve, Basil L., 54 n. 
Gilfillan, 124 n. 
Gillies, John, 156 
Gillies, R. P., 57 
Gilman, James, 81, 81 n. 
Gisborne, Thomas, 125, 125 n. 
Glance at Wordsworth 's Reading, A, 

Cooper's, 132 n. 
Goethe, 12, 165 
Goody Blake and Harry Gill, 

Wordsworth's, 106 
Gordon, 155 
Gospels, the, 178 
Gourgues, Dominique de, no 
Grammar, Lily's, 169 
Gray, 106, 141 
Guardian, The, 136, 137 
Guicciardini, 156 
Guide to the Lakes, Wordsworth' 's 

(ed. E. de Selincourt), 109 n., 

113 n. 
Guinicelli, Guido, 187 
Gustavus Adolphus, 156 
Gustavus Vasa, 156 
Guthrie, 157 

Hakluyt, no 

Hallow Fair, Fergusson's, 142 

Hallowe'en, Burns', 142 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



233 



Hamilton, William Rowan, 57, 59, 

62 
Harford, 7 n. 
Harte, 156 
Hartley, David, 107 
Harvey, C, 211 
Harvey, Gabriel, 159 
Haterius, 77 
Hawthorne, 88 
Hazlitt, W. C, 99 
Hazlitt, William, 88, 105 
Hearn, Lafcadio, 90 ff. 
Hearne, Samuel, 109, no, in, 

116, 123 
Hebrides, Travels in the Western, 

Buchanan's, no 
Hector Boethius, 155 
Hengist, 165 
Henry, 155 
Henry the Eighth, King, 34, 35, 

36, 40 
Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare's, 

166 
Henry the Fourth, Shakespeare's, 

166 
Herbert, George, 105, 209, 213 
Herodianus, 160 
Herodotus, 155, 160 
Hippocrates, 3 
Historical Relationships of Burns, 

The, Minto's, 154 m 
History, On the Study of J. S. 

Brewer's, 39 
History of Christian Doctrine, 

Shedd's, 7 n. 
History of Greece, Mitford's, 155 
Hobbes, 157 
Holinshed, 155, 167 
Homer, 53, 125, 127, 162, 163, 178 
Ho?ner, Treatise of, Plutarch's, 160 
Hone, 99 

Honore de Balzac, Gautier's, 95 n. 
Hooke, 155 
Hooker, 158 
Hope, Herbert's, 212 
Horace, 37, 76, 76 n., 106, 169, 

178 
Horsa, 165 

Howell, A. G. Ferrers, 203 n. 
Howell, James, no 



Howley, Archbishop, 84 

Hudson's Bay, Hearne's, 109, 123 

Humboldt, 127 

Hume, 40, 155, 157 

Hungary, Account of the Kingdom 

of, no 
Hunt, Leigh, 44 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 96 
Hymns, Spenser's, 163 

Idiot Boy, The, Wordsworth's, 106 
Inland Voyage, An, Stevenson's, 

88 
Iistihttiones Absolutissimae, Cle- 

nard's, 169 
Instructions for Forreine Travell, 

Howell's, no 

James, Captain Thomas, no, 123, 

124 
James, King, 178 
far of Honey fro)n Mount Hybla,A, 

Leigh Hunt's, 44 n., 45 n. 
fohn Anderson, Burns', 142 
Johnson, Samuel, 79, 79 n., 113, 

157 
folly Beggars, The, Burns', 148 
Jones, Sir William, Teignmouth's, 

157 

Jonson, Ben, 76, 77, 77 n., 79 n., 
147, 164, 167, 210 

fo7U'nal en Amei'ique, Chateau- 
briand's, 125 

Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 
83 n. 

fourney, Hearne's, 109, 123 

Jowett, 92, 219 n., 220, 220 n., 
222 n. 

J. S., 143 

Juan, Don, 146 

Junius, 83 

Juvenal, 169, 178 

Kaimes, 157 

Keats, 100, 125 

Knight, William, 57 n., 83 n., 105 n., 

112 n. 
Knights of Malta, Vertot's, 156 
Knolles, 156 
Kubla Khan, Coleridge's, 116 



234 



METHODS AND AIMS 



Lamb, 64, 6411., 85, 85 n., 88, 99 
Lament, Sordel's, 192 
Langdon, Ida, 16411. 
Langland, 163 

Latin Works of Dante, The, 20311. 
Laura, Petrarch's, 184, 204, 206, 

207, 208 
Lawes, Henry, 75 
Laws of Love, The, 191 
Lectures and Essays, Kingdon 

Clifford's, 2611. 
Lefranc, Abel, 127 
Legouis, Emile, 103, 10311., 108, 

108 n., 113 n., n6n., 129 
Leland, 155 

Leonardo da Vinci, 14, i6n. 
Letters and Correspondence of fohn 

Henry Newman, 85 n. 
Letters of the Wordsworth Family 

(ed. Knight), 57 n., 59 n., 61 n., 

62 n., 101 n., 112 n. 
Lewes, 12 

Leys Damors, Las, 190, 191 
Library of the World 's Best Liter- 
ature, Warner's, 54 n. 
Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, 

Elizabeth Bisland's, 91 n. 
Life and Works of George Herbert, 

Palmer's, 208 n., 212 n. 
Life of Catherine LL, Tooke's, 1 56, 

157 
Life of Charles Lamb, Lucas', 

85 n. 
Life of Coleridge, Gilman's, 81 n. 
Life of Gladstone, Morley's, 100 
Life of Gustavus Adolphus, 

Harte's, 156 
Life of fohnson, Boswell's, 79 n. 
Life of Lord Byron, Moore's, 158 n. 
Life of Michael Angelo, Harford's, 

7n. 
Life of Newton, 157 
Lily, 169 

Lily's Grammar, 169 
Linnaeus, 106 
Literature of the Georgian Era, 

Minto's, 154 m 
Littledale, Harold, 124 m 
Lives of the Admirals, Campbell's, 

*57 



Livy, 1 55 

Lobo, 113 

Locke, in, 157 

Lockwood, Laura E., 63, 76 n. 

Losh, 114 

Love's Labor's Lost, Shakespeare's, 

168 
Love Unknown, Herbert's, 213 
Lucas, E. V., 85 n. 
Lucian, 160 
Lucretius, 53, 163, 178 
Lupton, 169 
Luther, 35 
Lycidas, Milton's, 74 
Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth's 

and Coleridge's, 108, 114, 121, 

122, 123 n., 124 
Lysias, 216, 217 

Mackenzie, 149 

Macpherson, 151 

Main Currents, Brandes', 98 

Man of Feeling, The, Mackenzie's, 

i49> J5 1 

Man of the World, 151 

Manso, 171 

Mantuan, 169 

Manzoni, 85, 86 

Marlborough, 157 

Marmontel, 157 

Masque of Alfred, Thomson's, 151 

Masson, David, 63, 178 n. 

Maus, 192 

Mavor, Rev. W., no 

Maxims, Cato's, 169 

Memoirs of Wordsworth, Christo- 
pher Wordsworth's, 104 n., 105 n. 

Memories and Portraits, Steven- 
son's, 87, 90 

Metamorphoses, Ovid's, 169 

Metaphysics, Aristotle's, 3 

Methodology of Academical Study, 
Schelling's, 50 

Mezeray, 155 

Michael Angelo, 7 

Midas the Phrygian, 217 

Miller, Hugh, 12 

Milton, 1, 2 n., 41, 53, 62, 63 ff., 
96, 100, 104, 105, 114, 122, 124, 
127, 150, 171 ff., 179 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



235 



Milton's Poetical Works (ed. Mas- 
son), 178 n. 

Minto, William, 114, 132, I54n. 

Missionary, The, Bowies', 124 

Mitford, 155 

Modern Language Notes, 127, 
132 n. 

Modern Painters, Ruskin's, 129 

Molina, 113, 124 

Montaigne, 88 

Montesquieu, 157 

Moore, Dr., 143 

Moore, Thomas, I55n., 158 m 

Morley, Lord, 96, 96 n., 97, 100, 
100 n., 109 n., ii2n., 115 n. 

Moses, Life of, Stevenson's, 88 

Mouse, To a, Burns', 148 

Mozley, 85 n. 

Murdoch, 151 

Myers, F. W. H., 100, 100 n. 

'Namby Pamby,' 136 

Narborough, Sir John, 11 1 

Nation, The, 86 n. 

Navigations de Pantagruel, Les, 
Lefranc's, 127 

Nepos, 155 

New Life, The, Dante's (tr. Ros- 
setti), 195 n., 197 n., 198 

New Life, The, Dante's (tr. Nor- 
ton), 202 n. 

Newman, Cardinal, 84, 85 n. 

Newton, 116 

Newton, Life of, 157 

New Voyage round the World, 
Dampier's, 117 

Nicomachean Ethics, 2 n. 

Nineteenth Century, The, 114, 
114 n. 

Norberg, 156 

North, 170 

Norton, C. E., 202 n. 

Obermann, 88 

Observations made in a fourney in 

the Low Countries, Ray's, 11 1 
Ode to Duty, Wordsworth's, 106, 

107 
Odoric, 113 
Oeftering, W., 118, n8n. 



Olaus Magnus, 160 

Old Mortality, Stevenson's, 89 

On the New Forcers of Conscience, 

Milton's, 75 
On the Study of English History, 

J. S. Brewer's, 39 
On the Study of History, J. S. 

Brewer's, 39 
On Time, Milton's, 66 
Orations, Cicero's, 169 
Orme, 157 

Ossian, Macpherson's, 151 
Othman the First, 156 
Ovid, 53, 167, 169, 178 
Oxford in the Vacation, Lamb's, 

64 n. 

Paley, 157 

Palissy, Bernard, 92 

Palmer, G. H., 208 n., 212, 212 n., 
213 

Palmer's Herbert, Allen's, 213 n. 

Paradise Lost, Milton's, 52, 62, 
64 n., 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 
177 

Park, Mungo, 124, 157 

Parliamentary Debates, 158 

Parts of Animals, Aristotle's, 3 

Pedlar, The, Wordsworth's, 82, 83 

Peire de Corbiac, 192 

Pelew Lslands, Wilson's, 109, 116, 
124 

Percy, Thomas, 122 

Persius, 169, 178 

Peter Bell, Wordsworth's, 115 

Petrarch, 163, 178, 188, 189, 204 

Phaedrus, 216, 219 

Phaedrus, Plato's, 219 n. 

Phidias, 17 

Philip, Leland's, 155 

Philips, Ambrose, 136 

Phillips, 176 

Pindar, 54 n. 

Pinkerton, 128, 128 n., 157 

Plato, 3, 4, 17 n., 163, 178, 185, 219 

Plautus, 169 

Plutarch, 155, 160, 167, 170 

Poems and Extracts chosen by 
William Wordsworth (ed. Little- 
dale), I24n. 



236 



METHODS AND AIMS 



Poems by Wordsworth (ed. Dow- 
den), 97 n., 10911. 

Poetical Works of Coleridge (ed. 
Campbell), 108 n., 123 n., 124 n. 

Poetical Works of Milton (ed. Mas- 
son), 178 n. 

Poetical Works of Wordsworth (ed. 
Dowden), 117 n. 

Poetical Works of Wordsworth (ed. 
Morley), 100 n., 109 n., 112 n., 
ii5n., 117 n. 

Pollard, Jane, 100 n. 

Pollock, Sir Frederick, 26 

Pope, 41, 105, 123, 128, 134, 135, 
136, 140, 141, 142, 143 

Porteus, 158 

Portfolio, The, 88 

Potter, 155 

Praeterita, Ruskin's, I55n. 

Prelude, The, Wordsworth's, 98, 
102 n., 103, 103 n., non., 115, 
116, 116 n., 117, 117 n., 118, 
118 n., 120, 120 n., 125, 130, 
130 n., 223 n. 

Pre-Raphaelites, 9 

Principal Navigations, Hakluyt's, 
no 

Promessi Sposi, I, Unpublished 
Passages from, 85 

Prophets, the, 178 

Prose Poetry of Thomas De 
Quincey, The, Cooper's, 84 

Protagoras, Plato's, 3 

Psalmanazar, in 

Psalms, the, 178 

Pueriles Confabulatiunculae, 169 

Purchas, Samuel, no 

Purchas his Pilgrimage, no, 116 

Queen and Huntress, Jonson's, 

210 
Quintilian, 158 
Quiros, De, 124 

Rabelais, 127, 127 n. 
Rab the Ranter, 147 
Raleigh, Professor, 97, 97 n., 101, 

109 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 162 
Rambler, The, 79, 158 



Ramsay, Allan, 137, 138, 139, 142, 

147 
Raphael, 25 
Rapin, 155 

Rasselas, Johnson's, ii3n. 
Ray, John, in 
Raymond, 113 
Reason of Church Government, 

The, Milton's, 2 n., 183 
Recluse, The, Wordsworth's, 114, 

Rerum Scottcarum Historia, Bu- 
chanan's, 160 

Revue Germanique, 107 

Reynolds, Joshua, 16, 17 n. 

Reynolds, Myra, 125, 125 n., 128 

Rigaud, John Francis, 16 n. 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 
The, Coleridge's, 108, 121, 122 

Ritter, Karl, 127 

Roads, Stevenson's, 88 

Robertson, 157 

Robinson, Crabb, 104 

Roderick Random, 147 

Rollin, 155 

Rossetti, 195 n., 197 n. 

Rousseau, 80, 81 n., 119, 129, 130, 

iS7 
Rudolph of Hapsburg, 156 
Ruskin, 9, 74, 155 
Ruth, Wordsworth's, 83, 115, 116, 

125 
Rycaut, Sir Paul, 156 

Sallust, 155, 157 

Saul, Browning's, 187 n. 

Scaliger, 161 

Schelling, 30, 50 

Schiller, 156 

Scots wha hae, Burns', 142 

Scott, 157 

Seaside Studies, Lewes', 12 

Seasons, The, Thomson's, 52 

Second Defense, Milton's, 180 n. 

Selincourt, De, 109 n., 113 m 

Seneca, 169 

Sententiae Pueriles, 169 

Sentimental fourney, Sterne's, 

i49> 1 S 1 
Sforza, Francesco, 85, 86 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



237 



Shakespeare, 40, 53, 59, 76, 96, 
100, 104, 105, 106, 114, 124, 
127, 134, 147, 164 ff., 170, 178, 
209 

Shakespearean Tragedy, A. C. 
Bradley's, 641a. 

Shakespeare 's Books, Anders', 169m 

Shaler, N. S., 27, 3411. 

Shaw, 124 

Shedd, 4 

Shelley,ioo 

Shelvocke, 108, no, 117, 123 

Shelvocke's Voyages, 108 

Shenstone, 141, 151 

Shepheardes Calender, Spenser's, 

163 

Shepherd's Week, Gay's, 137 

Sheridan, 158 

She was a Phantom of Delight, 

Wordsworth's, 115 
Sidney, 209, 210 
Simpson, Mrs., 83 
Sir William Jones, Teignmouth's, 

157 
Smith, Justin H., 194 n. 
Smith, Nowell, 52 n., 53 n. 
Smollett, 155 
Socrates, 216, 220 
Solemn Music, At a, Milton's, 68, 

69, 71,72,73 
Solinus, 160 

Sonnets, Milton's, 66, 66 n., 75 
Sordel, 192 

Southampton, Earl of, 164 
South Atlantic Quarterly, The, 

17m. 
Southey, 117, 124, 125, 157 
South Sea Letters, The, Steven- 
son's, 89 
Spectator, The, 158 
Speech on Conciliation, Burke's, 

48, 48 n. 
Spencer, Herbert, 8, 13 n. 
Spenser, Edmund, 100, 104, 105, 

106, 114, 122, 1586°., 178 
Spenser's Theory of Fine Art, 

Langdon's, 164 n. 
Spirit of Discovery by Sea, The, 

Bowies', 124 
Spirit of the Age, The, Hazlitt's, 105 



Standard Dictionary, 2, 129 

Stanihurst, 161 

Stanzas written in my Pocket- Copy 
of Thomson's ' Castle of Indo- 
lence,' Wordsworth's, 115 

Steele, 136, 137 

Sterne, 149, 151 

Stevenson, R. L., 87 ff., 146 

Stothard, 124 

Strabo, 157, 161 

Strange and Dangerous Voyage, 
James', no, 124 

Studies in Literature, Morley's, 
96 n., 100 n. 

Studies in Poetry and Criticism, 
Collins', 125 m 

Surface, Charles, 147 

Switzerland, Account of, Bianchi's, 
no 

Sylvester, 178 

Symposium, The, Plato's, 17 n., 
219, 220 n., 222 n. 

Tables Turned, The, Wordsworth's, 

98 
Tacitus, 155 
Tarn Glen, Burns', 142 
Tarn o' Shanter, Burns', 142, 148 
Tangralopi, 156 
Tasso, 162, 163, 178, 188 
Teignmouth, 157 
Tekeli, 157 
Tennyson, 86, 89, 96 
Terence, 53, 169 
Theocritus, 53, 106, 136, 163 
There was a Boy, Wordsworth's, 

ii5 
Thiebault, 156 

Thirty Years' War, Schiller's, 156 
Thomson, James, 105, 116, 141, 

151 
Thomson, Mrs., 75 
Thorn, The, Wordsworth's, 117 
Three Bonnets, The, Ramsay's, 142 
Thucydides, 155 
Tillotson, 158 
Tindal, 155 

To a Mouse, Burns', 148 
Tobin, James, 114 
Tom Jones, 147 



2 3 8 



METHODS AND AIMS 



Tooke, 156 

Toxaris, Lucian's, 160 

Tragedies, Seneca's, 169 

Traherne, 211 

Transactions of the Wordsworth 

Society, 1 1 1 n. 
Travels, Bartram's, 11911., 123 
Travels, Carver's, 109 
Travels in Divers Parts of Europe, 

in 
Travels in France, Italy, Germany, 

and Switzerland, Gilbert Bur- 
net's, no 
Travels in the Western Hebrides, 

Buchanan's, no 
Travels into Turkey, Busbequius', 

no 
Travels to Discover the Soicrces of 

the Nile, Bruce's, in, 123 
Treasure Island, Stevenson's, 89 
Treatise of Homer, Plutarch's, 

160 
Treatise on Painting, A, Leonardo 

da Vinci's, i6n. 
Treatment of Nature in English 

Poetry, The, Reynolds', 125, 

I26n. 
Troubadours at Home, Justin H. 

Smith's, 194 n. 
Turkey, Travels into, Busbequius', 

no 
Tutin, J. R., 118 
Twa Books, Ramsay's, 142 
Twa Dogs, The, Burns', 142 

Unlicensed Printing, Essay on the 
Liberty of, Milton's, 1 50 

Unpublished Passages from I Pro- 
messi Sposi, 85 

Upon the Circumcision, Milton's, 
66, 67 

Vailima Letters, Stevenson's, 89 
Vasa, Gustavus, 156 
Vaughan, 211 
Veronese, 25 
Vertot, 155 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 14, 16 n. 
Virgil, 53, 106, 135, 136, 160, 161, 
162, 163, 169, 178 



Visions, Spenser's, 163 

Vita Nuova, Dante's, 195 n., 197 n., 

198, 202 n. 
Vocabulary of Sea Phrases, in 
Voltaire, 155, 156 
Vondel, 175 

Voyages and Travels (1744), in 
Voyages and Travels, Pinkerton's, 

128 n. 
Voyage round the World, A, Shel- 

vocke's, 108 n. 
Voyages to the South and North, 

by Sir fohn Narborough and 

others, Account of, in 
Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries, 

Collection of, Mavor's, no 
Vulgari Eloquentia, De, Dante's, 

203 

Wace, Henry, 43 n. 

Walks in a Forest, Gisborne's, 

12511. 
Wallace, 86 

Wallenstein (tr. Coleridge), 107 
Walsh, William, 135, 136, 140 
' Wanderer, The,' Wordsworth's, 

117 
Wartons, the, 141 
Waverley Novels, 89 
Wenceslaus, 156 
West Indies, Bryan Edwards', 

123 
What Knowledge is of most Worth, 

Spencer's, 13 n. 
Wilson, 109, 116 
Winchelsea, Anne, Countess of, 

105 

Windsor Forest, Pope's, 136 

Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's, 168 

Wolsey, 36 

Wordsworth, Christopher, 104 n. 

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 83 n., 
101 n., 112 

Wordsworth, John, 117 

Wordsworth, William, 52, 52 n., 
53 n., 54, 55, 55 n., 56 n., 57, 
59, 62, 82, 88, 96 ff., no ff., 
136, 153, 160, 163, 223 

Wordsworth and Barron Field, 
Knight's, 105 n. 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



239 



Wordsworth Dictionary, Tutin's, 

118 
Wordsworth's Great Failure., 

Minto's, 11411. 
Wordsworth's Literary Criticism 

(ed. Nowell Smith), 52 n., 53 n., 

55 n., 56 n. 
Wordsworth s und Byron's Natur- 

Dichtung, Oeftering's, 118 n. 
World, The, 158 



Wrangham, Archdeacon, in 
Wright, William Aldis, 63, 64 n. 

Xenophon, 155, 185 

Ye Banks and Braes, Burns', 142 
Young, 151 

Zarco, 124 

Zobnomia, Erasmus Darwin's, 106 



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